Ube

Series

POEMS BY PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY.

Illustrated and decorated by Robert Anning Bell. With an Introduction by Professor Walter Raleigh, M.A. Post 8vo. js. 6d.

POEMS BY JOHN KEATS. Illustrated and

decorated by Robert Anning Bell. With an Introduc- tion by Professor Walter Raleigh, M.A. yd edition^ revised, with several new illustrations. Post 8vo. 7$. 6d.

POEMS BY ROBERT BROWNING. Illus-

trated and decorated by Byam Shaw. With an Intro- duction by Richard Garnett, LL.D., C.B. znd edition. Post 8vo. 75 . 6d.

ENGLISH LYRICS, from Spenser to Milton.

Illustrated and decorated by R. Anning Bell. With an Introduction by John Dennis, Post 8vo. 6s.

MINOR POEMS BY JOHN MILTON. Illus- trated and decorated by Alfred Garth Jones. Post 8vo. 6s.

THE POEMS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE.

Illustrated and decorated by W. Heath Robinson. With an Introduction by Noel Williams. Post 8vo. 6s.

LONDON: GEORGE BELL & SONS

POEMS

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

POP

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INTRO! WAI ILLV ROBEP

190

1

POEMS BY PERCY BYSHE

SHELLEY

INTRODVCTION BY WXLTER RALEIGH ILLVSTR ATIONS BY ROBERT ANNINGBELL

LONDONT GEORGE BELL AND

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Mo 4

CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND co.

TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.

CONIENJTS

ALASTOR ; OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE 5

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

A SUMMER EVENING CHURCHYARD — LECHLADE,

GLOUCESTERSHIRE 33

To COLERIDGE 34

SONNET TO WORDSWORTH 36

OZYMANDIAS 36

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY 37

LINES WRITTEN AMONG THE EUGANEAN HlLLS . STANZAS WRITTEN IN DEJECTION, NEAR NAPLES SONNET—

" Lift not the painted veil which those who live "

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

THE SENSITIVE PLANT

THE CLOUD

To A SKYLARK

ARETHUSA

HYMN OF APOLLO 82

HYMN OF PAN 84

THE QUESTION 87

40

53 53 57 68

73

77

vi CONTENTS

I'AGE

THE Two SPIRITS : AN ALLEGORY 89

ODE TO NAPLES 92

LINES FROM "FIORDISPINA" 98

To JANE—

The Invitation 99

To JANE—

The Recollection 101

CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS"

"WE STREW THESE OPIATE FLOWERS" 1 09

"LIFE MAY CHANGE, BUT IT MAY FLY NOT" . . . . I IO

" IN THE GREAT MORNING OF THE WORLD " . . . . IIO

"WORLDS ON WORLDS ARE ROLLING EVER" . . . . 112

"THE WORLD'S GREAT AGE BEGINS ANEW" 113

SHORTER LYRICS

ON FANNY GOODWIN 119

LINES—

" That time is dead for ever, child " 119

FRAGMENT ON HOME 120

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES 121

THE PAST 121

To MARY—

" O Mary dear, that you were here " 122

THE INDIAN SERENADE 123

Two FRAGMENTS TO MARY—

" My dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone" . . 124

" The world is dreary " 124

FRAGMENTS—

Questions 125

Love the Universe 125

Visitations of Calm Thoughts 125

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY 126

To

" I fear thy kisses, gentle maiden " 127

SONG—

" Rarely, rarely, comest thou " 127

SONG OF PROSERPINE, WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON

THE PLAIN OF ENNA 130

To THE MOON 131

CONTENTS vii

PAGE

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS 131

TIME LONG PAST 132

To NIGHT 132

FROM THE ARABIC : AN IMITATION 134

To EMILIA VIVIANI 135

TIME 136

To

" Music, when soft voices die " 136

MUTABILITY 136

THE AZIOLA 138

TO-MORROW . . • 138

To

" One word is too often profaned " 1 39

To

" When passion's trance is overpast " 140

A BRIDAL SONG 141

LINES—

" When the Lamp is shattered " 141

To JANE—

" The keen stars are twinkling " 143

SONG FROM "CHARLES I." —

"A Widow Bird sate mourning" 144

DIRGES AND LAMENTS

THE DIRGE OF BEATRICE (From " The Cenci ") ... 149

AUTUMN: A DIRGE 150

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR 151

A LAMENT—

"O world! OLife! OTime!" 152

REMEMBRANCE 153

A DIRGE—

" Rough wind, that moanest loud " 1 54

EPIPSYCHIDION 159

ADONAIS 181

THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE 207

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND 235

INTRODUCTION

MORE than the others of that group of English poets who flourished at the beginning of the nineteenth century, and whose work, taken as a whole, gives to English literature its all but greatest glory, Shelley was the inheritor and the exponent of the ideas of the French Revo- lution. The French Revolution aroused and then disappointed Wordsworth, causing him to turn away from political ideals and to seek con- solation in universal nature ; it made Byron a rebel, and Southey a Laureate ; but it gave birth to Shelley. And the chief effect of the

x INTRODUCTION

Revolution on English life and thought is to be sought in literature rather than in politics. The great wave that broke over Europe in the roar of the Napoleonic wars spent its strength in vain on the political structure of these islands, but the air was long salt with its spray. And the poems of Shelley, if it be not too fanciful to prolong the figure, are the rainbow lights seen in the broken wave.

The ideas of the Revolution and the passion of the Revolution glitter and vibrate in Shelley's poems. And these ideas, it must be remem- bered, in their earlier and cruder political forms, had but a short spell of life. They bred the giant that killed them ; the modern scientific and historical temper finds it wellnigh impossible to regain the outlook of those who stood breath- lessly waiting for the revelation of a new heaven and a new earth. So that it is not to be won- dered at if the poetry that sprang from the political creed has been to some extent involved in the downfall of the creed. Certain it is that few of his readers, even among his professed admirers, read Shelley for his meaning ; few, even among his critics, treat his message seri- ously. The people of England, said Burke, want " food that will stick to their ribs " ; and the remark condenses in a phrase all that dissatis- faction with theory and dream which is heard as an undertone in most of the authoritative criticisms of Shelley. The poet has achieved immortality, but not on his own terms. He is

INTRODUCTION xi

" a beautiful and ineffectual angel " — a decora- tor's angel, one might almost say, designed for a vacant space, not the authentic messenger of the will of Heaven. Or he is a moonlight visitant that soothes the soul with melodious words and beautiful images when the bonds of reality are loosened. As a prophet he is lightly esteemed, but when once the prophet's mantle is gently removed from his shoulders by tender official hands, he is welcome to stay with us, and to delight us in all restful places by the subtle marvels of his lyrical craft, and the iri- descent play of his creative fancy.

Yet seeing that a poet is a poet only in so far as he reveals the beauty and the power that is universal and enduring caught from the con- fused lights and shadows of his own time, it is worth the pains to examine the main ideas that animate the poetry of Shelley. Some of these, it may not be denied, are utterly fallen" from power. Like other revolutionary thinkers, Shelley hopes for the salvation and perfection of mankind by way of an absolute breach with the past. History is to him at best a black business, an orgy of fantastic and luxurious cruelty. Commerce is " the venal interchange of all that human art and nature yield." Gold —how far would gold have enthralled the im- agination of poets if it had been a dull black substance with a slightly unpleasant scent ? — gold is a god, or demon, of dreadful strength. Education and tradition, institution and custom

xii INTRODUCTION

are made the marks of the same impassioned invective, simple sometimes almost to thought- lessness, as in that passage of " Laon and Cythna" where British parental authority is thus described:

" The land in which I lived by a fell bane Was withered up. Tyrants dwelt side by side And stabled in our homes ; "

Sometimes rising to heights of grave denuncia- tion, as in that other passage where is described how

"The Queen of Slaves,

The hood-winked angel of the blind and dead, Custom, with iron mace points to the graves Where her own standard desolately waves Over the dust of Prophets and of Kings."

Yet this multiplied oppression, which is im- posed on man by man himself, which has grown with his growth and is intertwined with his dearest interests, is conceived of by the revo- lutionary theorists and, at least in his earlier poems, by Shelley himself, as a thing separable from man, a burden laid on him by some dark unknown power, a net weaved around him by foreign enemies. One resolute act of inspired insurrection, and the burden may be cast off for ever, the net severed at a blow, leaving man free, innocent and happy, the denizen of a golden world.

In his later and maturer poems we may de- tect Shelley's growing suspicion that the burden of man is none other than the weight of " the

INTRODUCTION xiii

superincumbent hour," or of the atmosphere that he breathes ; that the net has its fibres entangled with the nerves of his body and the veins and arteries that feed his life. Yet he neither faltered nor repented ; he had learned

" To hope, till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; "

and if the tyrant that oppresses mankind is immitigable Reality, he will be a rebel against Reality in the name of that fairer and no less immortal power, the desire of the heart.

Shelley is the poet of desire. To him, as to Blake, the promptings of desire were the voice of divinity in man, and instinct and impulse bore the authentic stamp of the Godhead. His pure and clear and wonderfully simple spirit could hardly conceive of a duty that travels by a dim light through difficult and uncertain ways, still less of a duty that calculates and balances and chooses. When he was lifted on the crest of some over-mastering emotion, he saw all clear ; dropped into the hollow, he could only wait for another wave. It is as if he could not live save in the keen and rarified air of some great joy or heroic passion ; and his large capacity for joy made him the more susceptible to all that thwarts or depresses or interrupts it. These two strains, of rapture and of lament, of delight in love and beauty, and of protest against a world where love and beauty are not fixed eternal forms, run through all the poetry of Shelley, answering

xiv INTRODUCTION

each other like the voices of a chorus. Our life on earth seems to him a stormy vision, a wintry forest, a " cold common hell " ; but it has moments of exaltation which belie it, and by their power and intensity hold out a promise of deliverance. Thought and passion transform the dull suffering of this life into the likeness of " a fiery martyrdom," and by their very intensity bear witness to the greatness of the issues at stake.

It is somewhat absurdly made a charge against Shelley that the ideal which he sets before humanity is not a practicable or possible one. He had to deal with this sort of criticism during his lifetime, and in the preface to " Prometheus Unbound" he offers a grave explanation ; " It is a mistake," he says, "to suppose that I dedi- cate my poetical compositions solely to the direct enforcement of reform, or that I consider them in any degree as containing a reasoned system on the theory of human life." No exact politi- cal programme is deducible from his works. No coherent or satisfactory account can be given of the changes that would be necessary to bring in the idyllic society that mocks his vision in the distance. But if the aspirations of a poet are to be tethered to what is demonstrably attainable, the loftiest legitimate ambition ever breathed in English verse would perhaps be found in those lines of " The Excursion" where an earnest wish is expressed for a System of National Education established universally by Govern-

INTRODUCTION xv

ment. The creed of the Revolution was a noble creed, and although Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, considered as the basis of a political system, have been sadly battered by critical artillery, they have not yet been so completely disgraced that it is forbidden to a poet to desire them. Only in a world where they shall be more desired than they are with us can they ever become possible. And the gist of Shelley's teaching lies not in this or that promise held out of future good, but in the means that he in- sists on for its realization. The elusive vague- ness of the millenium pictured in the weakest part of " Prometheus Unbound" detracts no whit from the loftiness and truth of the great speech of Demogorgon and the closing World- symphony. The early Christians, too, were deceived in their hopes of the millennium, but they, like the early alchemists, went not un- rewarded by " fair, unsought discoveries by the way."

The very vagueness of Shelley's poetry is an essential part of its charm. He speaks the language of pure emotion, where definite per- ceptions are melted in the mood they generate. Possessed by the desire of escape, he gazes calmly and steadily on nothing of earthly build. Every visible object is merely another starting- point for the cobwebs of dreams. Like his own poet,

" He will watch from dawn to gloom The lake-reflected sun illume

INTRODUCTION

The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom, Nor heed nor see, what things they be ; But from these create he can Forms more real than living man, Nurslings of immortality."

His thoughts travel incessantly from what he sees to what he desires, and his goal is no more distinctly conceived than his starting-place. His desire leaps forth towards its mark, but is consumed, like his fancied arrow, by the speed of its own flight. His devotion is "to some- thing afar from the sphere of our sorrow " ; the voices that he hears bear him vague messages and hints

" Of some world far from ours Where music and moonlight and feeling are one."

And this perfect lyrical vagueness produces some of the most ghostly and bodiless descrip- tions to be found in all poetry. His scenery is dream-scenery ; it can hardly be called cloud- scenery, for the clouds that tumble in a June sky are shapes of trim and substantial jollity compared with the shifting and diffused ether of his phantom visions. The scene of his poems is laid among

" Dim twilight-lawns, and stream-illumined caves, And wind-enchanted shapes of wandering mist."

And the inhabitants are even less definite in outline ; the spaces of his imagination are

" Peopled with unimaginable shapes,

Such as ghosts dream dwell in the lampless deep."

INTRODUCTION xvii

The poet is himself native to this haunted and scarce visible world ; and when, in " Epipsychi- dion," he tells of the Being who communed with him in his youth, it is in this world that they meet:

" On ail imagined shore, Under the grey beak of some promontory She met me, robed in such exceeding glory, That I beheld her not."

It is pleasant to consider what a critic of the school of Johnson, if any had survived, would have said of these lines. " Here, Sir," he might have said, "he tells us merely that in a place which did not exist he met nobody. Whom did he expect to meet ? " Yet the spirit of Romance, which will listen to no logic but the logic of feeling, is prompt to vindicate Shelley. The kind of human experience that he sets himself to utter will not admit of chastened and exact language ; the homeless desires and intimations that seem to have no counterpart and no cause among visible things must create or divine their origin and object by suggestion and hyperbole, by groping analogies, and fluttering denials. To Shelley life is the great unreality, a painted veil, the triumphal procession of a pretender. Yet, here and there, in the works of Nature and of Art — " flowers, ruins, statues, music, words," — there are sudden inexplicable glories that speak of reality beyond. It is from the images and thoughts that are least of a piece with the daily economy of life, from the faithful attend-

xviii INTRODUCTION

ants that hang on the footsteps of our exiled per- ceptions, and from the dwellers on the boundary of our alienated world, from shadows and echoes, dreams and memories, yearnings and regrets, that he would learn to give expression to this hidden reality. Yet the very attempt defeats itself and is reduced to the bare negation of appearances. The highest beauty, as he de- scribes it, is always invisible ; the liveliest emo- tion passes into swoon, and takes on the likeness of death. Demogorgon, the lord of the Uni- verse, is " a mighty darkness, filling the seat of power."

So habitual and familiar was Shelley's con- verse with this spectral world that both in his thought and in his expression it held the place of what is commonly called the real world. The figures of his poetry illustrate what is strange by what is familiar, and it is the shadows and spirits that are familiar. The autumn leaves scurrying before the wind remind him of " ghosts from an enchanter fleeing." The skylark in the heavens is " like a poet hidden in the light of thought." The avalanche on the mountain is piled flake by flake, as thought by thought is piled in heaven-defying minds,

"Till some great truth Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots."

It is his outward perceptions that he seeks to explain and justify by a reference to the ex-

INTRODUCTION xix

istences and forms that filled and controlled his daily meditations.

His poetry, as might be expected, has been found too remote and unsubstantial to satisfy the taste of many readers and even of some few lovers of poetry. It is lacking in human interest. The figures that he sets in motion are for the most part creatures of his own making, who have no tangible being outside the realm of his imagination. Minds that move naturally and easily only in the world of concrete existences are compelled to translate Shelley's poetry, as it were, into another dialect of the universal language, if they would grasp his meaning. Too often they have refused the task ; they have been content to float along on his melody, and to indulge their sense of colour with the delicate tints of his vision. Even when he is thus read, there is no denying the matchless quality of his poetic genius, or the absolute mastery of his art. But the wisdom of his reading of life, and the scope and depth of his thought, have some- times been questioned.

He died young, and the accumulated wis- dom of old experience was never within his reach. Yet before he died he had graduated in the school of suffering, and had there learned lessons that only the wise heart learns. " Pro- metheus Unbound " is something more than a dance of prismatic lights and a concert of sweet sounds ; it is a record of spiritual experience, subtle in its analysis, profound in its insight.

xx INTRODUCTION

The supreme torture of Prometheus, inflicted by the Furies, comes to him in the form of doubt — doubt lest his age-long sufferings should all be vain, and worse than vain. The Furies, who are " hollow underneath, like death," and who darken the dawn with their multitude, are the ministers of pain and fear, of mistrust and hate. They plant self-contempt and shame in young spirits ; they live in the heart and brain in the shape of base desires and craven thoughts. Of all passions, the ugliest in Shelley's eyes is Hate ; the most terrible and maleficent is Fear. But Prometheus through his long agony feels no fear, and no rancour ; the pity and love that endure in his heart are at last victorious, and the Furies, baffled, take themselves away. The first act is full of psychological study, and Shelley throughout is speaking of what he has felt and known and observed. But he embodies it in such unearthly forms, and so carefully avoids the allegorical manner, that the details of the drama, difficult as they often are of interpreta- tion, have been wrongly regarded as freaks of ornament and fantasy. The main idea, the conception of Love and Life as a dualism, and of Love as the sole principle of freedom, joy, beauty and harmony, in Nature and in Man, appears in Shelley's earlier poems, and strengthens with his growth, until it reaches its most magnificent expression in the radiant figure of Asia and the closing rhapsody of " Adonais."

INTRODUCTION xxi

"That Light whose smile kindles the Universe, That Beauty in which all things work and move, That Benediction which the eclipsing Curse Of birth can quench not, that sustaining Love Which through the web of being blindly wove By man and beast and earth and air and sea, Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors of The fire for which all thirst ; now beams on me Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality."

His early death, though it has endeared him the more to his lovers, has also deprived him of a full meed of critical appreciation. The bulk of reputable criticism is written by middle-aged men, who have made their peace with the world, on reasonable and honourable terms, perhaps, but not without concessions. How should they do full justice to the young rebels, the Marlowes and the Shelleys, who died under the standard of revolt ? They are tender to them, and tolerant, as to their younger selves. But they have accepted, where these refused, and they cannot always conceal their sense of the headstrong folly of the refusal. Nor can their judgment be disabled, for they have knowledge on their side, and experience, and the practical lore of life. Further, they can enlist poet against poet, and over against the heart that defies Power which seems omnipotent, they can set the heart that watches and receives. Is there not more of human wisdom to be learned from the quiet harvester of the twilight than from the glittering apostle of the dawn ? Yet there is a wisdom that is not born of acceptance; and the spirit

XX11

INTRODUCTION

that is to be tamed to the uses of this world, if it has much to learn, has something also to for- get. The severest criticism that the world and the uses of the world are called upon to undergo is that which looks out on them, ever afresh, from the surprised and troubled eyes of a child. In the debate of Youth and Age, neither can expect to have it all his own way. It is therefore no unqualified condemnation of Shelley's poetry to say that it appeals chiefly to the young. And it is not true to say that it appeals to no others. Many men, it has been said, are poets in their youth ; it would be truer to say that many born subjects of prose are tickled by sentiment in their youth, and beguiled by sense into believ- ing, for a time, that they love poetry. The love of poetry is not so easily eradicable ; it is not Time's fool,

"though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come,"

and wherever there are poets, to the end of time, Shelley will find lovers.

WALTER RALEIGH.

It is hoped that the present selection of Shelley's poems will be found to contain all of his best-loved lyrical pieces. There is no great poet who offers a more hopeless task to the illustrator, if by illustration is understood a drawing that helps to the understanding of the poem. But Art begets Art, and there is surely nothing illicit about an embroidery of fair designs suggested by a reading of the poems. If they be found superfluous or irrelevant, they must share that condemnation with the preface.

POEMS

BY

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

ALASTOR.

Oil THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare. — Confess. St. August.

ALASTOR OR THE SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE

EARTH, ocean, air, beloved brotherhood !

If our great Mother has imbued my soul

With aught of natural piety to feel

Your love, and recompense the boon with mine ;

If dewy morn, and odorous noon, and even,

With sunset and its gorgeous ministers,

And solemn midnight's tingling silentness ;

If autumn's hollow sighs in the sere wood,

And winter robing with pure snow and crowns

Of starry ice the grey grass and bare boughs ;

If spring's voluptuous pantings when she breathes

Her first sweet kisses, have been dear to me ;

If no bright bird, insect, or gentle beast

6 ALASTOR

I consciously have injured, but still loved And cherished these my kindred ; then forgive This boast, beloved brethren, and withdraw No portion of your wonted favour now.

Mother of this unfathomable world ! Favour my solemn song, for I have loved Thee ever, and thee only ; I have watched Thy shadow, and the darkness of thy steps, And my heart ever gazes on the depth Of thy deep mysteries. I have made my bed In charnels and on coffins, where black death Keeps record of the trophies won from thee, Hoping to still these obstinate questionings Of thee and thine, by forcing some lone ghost, Thy messenger, to render up the tale Of what we are. In lone and silent hours, When night makes a weird sound of its own stilln< Like an inspired and desperate alchymist Staking his very life on some dark hope, Have I mixed awful talk and asking looks With my most innocent love, until strange tears Uniting with those breathless kisses, made Such magic as compels the charmed night To render up thy charge : . . . and, though ne'er yet Thou hast unveiled thy inmost sanctuary, Enough from incommunicable dream, And twilight phantasms, and deep noonday thought, Has shone within me, that serenely now And moveless, as a long-forgotten lyre Suspended in the solitary dome Of some mysterious and deserted fane, I wait thy breath, Great Parent, that my strain May modulate with murmurs of the air, And motions of the forests and the sea, And voice of living beings, and woven hymns Of night and day, and the deep heart of man.

ALASTOR

There was a Poet whose untimely tomb No human hands with pious reverence reared, But the charmed eddies of autumnal winds Built o'er his mouldering bones a pyramid Of mouldering leaves in the waste wilderness : — A lovely youth, — no mourning maiden decked With weeping flowers, or votive cypress wreath, The lone couch of his everlasting sleep : — Gentle, and brave, and generous, — no lorn bard Breathed o'er his dark fate one melodious sigh : He lived, he died, he sung, in solitude. Strangers have wept to hear his passionate notes, And virgins, as unknown he passed, have pined And wasted for fond love of his wild eyes. The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And Silence, too enamoured of that voice, Locks its mute music in her rugged cell.

By solemn vision, and bright silver dream, His infancy was nurtured. Every sight And sound from the vast earth and ambient air, Sent to his heart its choicest impulses. The fountains of divine philosophy Fled not his thirsting lips, and all of great, Or good, or lovely, which the sacred past In truth or fable consecrates, he felt And knew. When early youth had passed, he left His cold fireside and alienated home To seek strange truths in undiscovered lands. Many a wide waste and tangled wilderness Has lured his fearless steps ; and he has bought With his sweet voice and eyes, from savage men, His rest and food. Nature's most secret steps He like her shadow has pursued, where'er The red volcano overcanopies Its fields of snow and pinnacles of ice With burning smoke, or where bitumen lakes

ALASTOR

On black bare pointed islets ever beat With sluggish surge, or where the secret caves Rugged and dark, winding among the springs Of fire and poison, inaccessible To avarice or pride, their starry domes Of diamond and of gold expand above Numberless and immeasureable halls, Frequent with crystal column, and clear shrines Of pearl, and thrones radiant with chrysolite. Nor had that scene of ampler majesty Than gems or gold, the varying roof of heaven And the green earth, lost in his heart its claims To love and wonder ; he would linger long In lonesome vales, making the wild his home, Until the doves and squirrels would partake From his innocuous hand his bloodless food, Lured by the gentle meaning of his looks, And the wild antelope, that starts whene'er The dry leaf rustles in the brake, suspend Her timid steps to gaze upon a form More graceful than her own.

His wandering step, Obedient to high thoughts, has visited The awful ruins of the days of old : Athens, and Tyre, and Balbec, and the waste Where stood Jerusalem, the fallen towers Of Babylon, the eternal pyramids, Memphis and Thebes, and whatsoe'er of strange Sculptured on alabaster obelisk, Or jasper tomb, or mutilated sphynx, Dark Aethiopia in her desert hills Conceals. Among the ruined temples there, Stupendous columns, and wild images Of more than man, where marble daemons watch The Zodiac's brazen mystery, and dead men Hang their mute thoughts on the mute walls around, He lingered, poring on memorials

ALASTOR

Of the world's youth, through the long burning day Gazed on those speechless shapes, nor, when the moon Filled the mysterious halls with floating shades, Suspended he that task, but ever gazed And gazed, till meaning on his vacant mind Flashed like strong inspiration, and he saw The thrilling secrets of the birth of time.

Meanwhile an Arab maiden brought his food, Her daily portion, from her father's tent, And spread her matting for his couch, and stole From duties and repose to tend his steps : — Enamoured, yet not daring for deep awe To speak her love : — and watched his nightly sleep, Sleepless herself, to gaze upon his lips Parted in slumber, whence the regular breath Of innocent dreams arose : then, when red morn Made paler the pale moon, to her cold home Wildered, and wan, and panting, she returned.

The Poet wandering on, through Arabic And Persia, and the wild Carmanian waste, And o'er the aerial mountains which pour down Indus and Oxus from their icy caves, In joy and exultation held his way ; Till in the vale of Cashmire, far within Its loneliest dell, where odorous plants entwine Beneath the hollow rocks a natural bower, Beside a sparkling rivulet he stretched His languid limbs. A vision on his sleep There came, a dream of hopes that never yet Had flushed his cheek. He dreamed a veiled maid Sate near him, talking in low solemn tones. Her voice was like the voice of his own soul Heard in the calm of thought ; its music long, Like woven sounds of streams and breezes, held His inmost sense suspended in its web

io ALASTOR

Of many-coloured woof and shifting hues.

Knowledge and truth and virtue were her theme

And lofty hopes of divine liberty,

Thoughts the most dear to him, and poesy,

Herself a poet. Soon the solemn mood

Of her pure mind kindled through all her frame

A permeating fire : wild numbers then

She raised, with voice stifled in tremulous sobs

Subdued by its own pathos : her fair hands

Were bare alone, sweeping from some strange harp

Strange symphony, and in their branching veins

The eloquent blood told an ineffable tale.

The beating of her heart was heard to fill

The pauses of her music, and her breath

Tumultuously accorded with those fits

Of intermitted song. Sudden she rose,

As if her heart impatiently endured

Its bursting burthen : at the sound he turned,

And saw by the warm light of their own life

Her glowing limbs beneath the sinuous veil

Of woven wind, her outspread arms now bare,

Her dark locks floating in the breath of night,

Her beamy bending eyes, her parted lips

Outstretched, and pale, and quivering eagerly.

His strong heart sunk and sickened with excess

Of love. He reared his shuddering limbs and quelled

His gasping breath, and spread his arms to meet

Her panting bosom : . . . she drew back a while,

Then, yielding to the irresistible joy,

With frantic gesture and short breathless cry

Folded his frame in her dissolving arms.

Now blackness veiled his dizzy eyes, and night

Involved and swallowed up the vision ; sleep,

Like a dark flood suspended in its course,

Rolled back its impulse on his vacant brain.

Roused by the shock he started from his trance —

ALASTOR ii

The cold white light of morning, the blue moon

Low in the west, the clear and garish hills,

The distinct valley and the vacant woods,

Spread round him where he stood. Whither have fled

The hues of heaven that canopied his bower

Of yesternight ? The sounds that soothed his sleep,

The mystery and the majesty of Earth,

The joy, the exultation ? His wan eyes

Gaze on the empty scene as vacantly

As ocean's moon looks on the moon in heaven.

The spirit of sweet human love has sent

A vision to the sleep of him who spurned

Her choicest gifts. He eagerly pursues

Beyond the realms of dream that fleeting shade ;

He overleaps the bounds. Alas ! alas !

Were limbs, and breath, and being intertwined

Thus treacherously ? Lost, lost, for ever lost,

In the wide pathless desert of dim sleep,

That beautiful shape ! Does the dark gate of death

Conduct to thy mysterious paradise,

O Sleep ? Does the bright arch of rainbow clouds,

And pendent mountains seen in the calm lake,

Lead only to a black and watery depth,

While death's blue vault, with loathliest vapours hung,

Where every shade which the foul grave exhales

Hides its dead eye from the detested day,

Conduct, O Sleep, to thy delightful realms ?

This doubt with sudden tide flowed on his heart,

The insatiate hope which it awakened stung

His brain even like despair.

While day-light held The sky, the Poet kept mute conference With his still soul. At night the passion came, Like the fierce fiend of a distempered dream, And shook him from his rest, and led him forth Into the darkness. — As an eagle grasped In folds of the green serpent, feels her breast

12 ALASTOR

Burn with the poison, and precipitates

Through night and day, tempest, and calm, and cloud,

Frantic with dizzying anguish, her blind flight

O'er the wide aery wilderness : thus driven

By the bright shadow of that lovely dream,

Beneath the cold glare of the desolate night,

Through tangled swamps and deep precipitous dells,

Startling with careless step the moon-light snake,

He fled. Red morning dawned upon his flight,

Shedding the mockery of its vital hues

Upon his cheek of death. He wandered on

Till vast Aornos seen from Petra's steep

Hung o'er the low horizon like a cloud ;

Through Balk, and where the desolated tombs

Of Parthian kings scatter to every wind

Their wasting dust, wildly he wandered on,

Day after day, a weary waste of hours,

Bearing within his life the brooding care

That ever fed on its decaying flame.

And now his limbs were lean ; his scattered hair

Sered by the autumn of strange suffering

Sung dirges in the wind ; his listless hand

Hung like dead bone within its withered skin ;

Life, and the lustre that consumed it, shone

As in a furnace burning secretly

From his dark eyes alone. The cottagers,

Who ministered with human charity

His human wants, beheld with wondering awe

Their fleeting visitant. The mountaineer,

Encountering on some dizzy precipice

That spectral form, deemed that the Spirit of wind

With lightning eyes, and eager breath, and feet

Disturbing not the drifted snow, had paused

In its career : the infant would conceal

His troubled visage in his mother's robe

In terror at the glare of those wild eyes,

To remember their strange light in many a dream

ALASTOR

Of after-times ; but youthful maidens, taught By nature, would interpret half the woe That wasted him, would call him with false names Brother, and friend, would press his pallid hand At parting, and watch, dim through tears, the path Of his departure from their father's door.

At length upon the lone Chorasmian shore He paused, a wide and melancholy waste Of putrid marshes. A strong impulse urged His steps to the sea-shore. A swan was there, Beside a sluggish stream among the reeds. It rose as he approached, and with strong wings Scaling the upward sky, bent its bright course High over the immeasurable main. His eyes pursued its flight. — " Thou hast a home, Beautiful bird ; thou voyagest to thine home, Where thy sweet mate will twine her downy neck With thine, and welcome thy return with eyes Bright in the lustre of their own fond joy. And what am I that I should linger here, With voice far sweeter than thy dying notes, Spirit more vast than thine, frame more attuned To beauty, wasting these surpassing powers In the deaf air, to the blind earth, and heaven That echoes not my thoughts ? " A gloomy smile Of desperate hope wrinkled his quivering lips. For sleep, he knew, kept most relentlessly Its precious charge, and silent death exposed, Faithless perhaps as sleep, a shadowy lure, With doubtful smile mocking its own strange charms.

Startled by his own thoughts he looked around. There was no fair fiend near him not a sight Or sound of awe but in his own deep mind. A little shallop floating near the shore Caught the impatient wandering of his gaze.

16 ALASTOR

It had been long abandoned, for its sides

Gaped wide with many a rift, and its frail joints

Swayed with the undulations of the tide.

A restless impulse urged him to embark

And meet lone Death on the drear ocean's waste

For well he knew that mighty Shadow loves

The slimy caverns of the populous deep.

The day was fair and sunny, sea and sky Drank its inspiring radiance, and the wind Swept strongly from the shore, blackening the waves. Following his eager soul, the wanderer Leaped in the boat, he spread his cloak aloft On the bare mast, and took his lonely seat, And felt the boat speed o'er the tranquil sea Like a torn cloud before the hurricane.

As one that in a silver vision floats Obedient to the sweep of odorous winds Upon resplendent clouds, so rapidly Along the dark and ruffled waters fled The straining boat. — A whirlwind swept it on, With fierce gusts and precipitating force, Through the white ridges of the chafed sea. The waves arose. Higher and higher still Their fierce necks writhed beneath the tempest's scourge Like serpents struggling in a vulture's grasp. Calm and rejoicing in the fearful war Of wave ruining on wave, and blast on blast Descending, and black flood on whirlpool driven With dark obliterating course, he sate : As if their genii were the ministers Appointed to conduct him to the light Of those beloved eyes, the Poet sate Holding the steady helm. Evening came on, The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray

ALASTOR 17

That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day ; Night followed, clad with stars. On every side More horribly the multitudinous streams Of ocean's mountainous waste to mutual war Rushed in dark tumult thundering, as to mock The calm and spangled sky. The little boat Still fled before the storm ; still fled, like foam Down the steep cataract of a wintry river ; Now pausing on the edge of the riven wave ; Now leaving far behind the bursting mass That fell, convulsing ocean. Safely fled — As if that frail and wasted human form, Had been an elemental god.

At midnight

The moon arose : and lo ! the aetherial cliffs Of Caucasus, whose icy summits shone Among the stars like sunlight, and around Whose caverned base the whirlpools and the waves Bursting and eddying irresistibly Rage and resound for ever. — Who shall save ? — The boat fled on, — the boiling torrent drove, — The crags closed round with black and jagged arms, The shattered mountain overhung the sea, And faster still, beyond all human speed, Suspended on the sweep of the smooth wave, The little boat was driven. A cavern there Yawned, and amid its slant and winding depths Ingulphed the rushing sea. The boat fled on With unrelaxing speed. — " Vision and Love ! " The Poet cried aloud, " I have beheld The path of thy departure. Sleep and death Shall not divide us long ! "

The boat pursued

The windings of the cavern. Day-light shone

C

i8 ALASTOR

At length upon that gloomy river's flow ;

Now, where the fiercest war among the waves

Is calm, on the unfathomable stream

The boat moved slowly. Where the mountain, riven,

Exposed those black depths to the azure sky,

Ere yet the flood's enormous volume fell

Even to the base of Caucasus, with sound

That shook the everlasting rocks, the mass

Filled with one whirlpool all that ample chasm ;

Stair above stair the eddying waters rose

Circling immeasurably fast, and laved

With alternating dash the knarled roots

Of mighty trees, that stretched their giant arms

In darkness over it. I' the midst was left,

Reflecting, yet distorting every cloud,

A pool of treacherous and tremendous calm.

Seized by the sway of the ascending stream,

With dizzy swiftness, round, and round, and round,

Ridge after ridge the straining boat arose,

Till on the verge of the extremest curve,

Where through an opening of the rocky bank,

The waters overflow, and a smooth spot

Of glassy quiet 'mid those battling tides

Is left, the boat paused shuddering. — Shall it sink

Down the abyss ? Shall the reverting stress

Of that resistless gulph embosom it ?

Now shall it fall ? — A wandering stream of wind,

Breathed from the west, has caught the expanded sail,

And, lo ! with gentle motion, between banks

Of mossy slope, and on a placid stream,

Beneath a woven grove it sails, and, hark !

The ghastly torrent mingles its far roar,

With the breeze murmuring in the musical woods.

Where the embowering trees recede, and leave

A little space of green expanse, the cove

Is closed by meeting banks, whose yellow flowers

For ever gaze on their own drooping eyes,

ALASTOR 19

Reflected in the crystal calm. The wave

Of the boat's motion marred their pensive task,

Which nought but vagrant bird, or wanton wind,

Or falling spear-grass, or their own decay

Had e'er disturbed before. The Poet longed

To deck with their bright hues his withered hair,

But on his heart its solitude returned,

And he forbore. Not the strong impulse hid

In those flushed cheeks, bent eyes, and shadowy frame

Had yet performed its ministry : it hung

Upon his life, as lightning in a cloud

Gleams, hovering ere it vanish, ere the floods

Of night close over it.

The noonday sun

Now shone upon the forest, one vast mass Of mingling shade, whose brown magnificence A narrow vale embosoms. There, huge caves, Scooped in the dark base of their aery rocks Mocking its moans, respond and roar for ever. The meeting boughs and implicated leaves Wove twilight o'er the Poet's path, as led By love, or dream, or god, or mightier Death, He sought in Nature's dearest haunt, some bank, Her cradle, and his sepulchre. More dark And dark the shades accumulate. The oak, Expanding its immense and knotty arms, Embraces the light beech. The pyramids Of the tall cedar overarching, frame Most solemn domes within, and far below, Like clouds suspended in an emerald sky, The ash and the acacia floating hang Tremulous and pale. Like restless serpents, clothed In rainbow and in fire, the parasites, Starred with ten thousand blossoms, flow around The grey trunks, and, as gamesome infants' eyes, With gentle meanings, and most innocent wiles, Fold their beams round the hearts of those that love,

20 ALASTOR

These twine their tendrils with the wedded boughs

Uniting their close union ; the woven leaves

Make net-work of the dark blue light of day,

And the night's noontide clearness, mutable

As shapes in the weird clouds. Soft mossy lawns

Beneath these canopies extend their swells,

Fragrant with perfumed herbs, and eyed with blooms

Minute yet beautiful. One darkest glen

Sends from its woods of musk-rose, twined with jasmine,

A soul-dissolving odour, to invite

To some more lovely mystery. Through the dell,

Silence and Twilight here, twin-sisters, keep

Their noonday watch, and sail among the shades,

Like vaporous shapes half seen ; beyond, a well,

Dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave,

Images all the woven boughs above,

And each depending leaf, and every speck

Of azure sky, darting between their chasms ;

Nor aught else in the liquid mirror laves

Its portraiture, but some inconstant star

Between one foliaged lattice twinkling fair,

Or, painted bird, sleeping beneath the moon,

Or gorgeous insect floating motionless,

Unconscious of the day, ere yet his wings

Have spread their glories to the gaze of noon.

Hither the Poet came. His eyes beheld Their own wan light through the reflected lines Of his thin hair, distinct in the dark depth Of that still fountain ; as the human heart, Gazing in dreams over the gloomy grave, Sees its own treacherous likeness there. He heard The motion of the leaves, the grass that sprung Startled and glanced and trembled even to feel An unaccustomed presence, and the sound Of the sweet brook that from the secret springs Of that dark fountain rose. A Spirit seemed

ALASTOR 21

To stand beside him — clothed in no bright robes

Of shadowy silver or enshrining light,

Borrowed from aught the visible world affords

Of grace, or majesty, or mystery ; —

But, undulating woods, and silent well,

And leaping rivulet, and evening gloom

Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,

Held commune with him, as if he and it

Were all that was, — only . . . when his regard

Was raised by intense pensiveness, . . . two eyes,

Two starry eyes, hung in the gloom of thought,

And seemed with their serene and azure smiles

To beckon him.

Obedient to the light

That shone within his soul, he went, pursuing The windings of the dell. — The rivulet Wanton and wild, through many a green ravine Beneath the forest flowed. Sometimes it fell Among the moss with hollow harmony Dark and profound. Now on the polished stones It danced ; like childhood laughing as it went : Then, through the plain in tranquil wanderings crept, Reflecting every herb and drooping bud That overhung its quietness. — " O stream ! Whose source is inaccessibly profound, Whither do thy mysterious waters tend ? Thou imagest my life. Thy darksome stillness, Thy dazzling waves, thy loud and hollow gulphs, Thy searchless fountain, and invisible course Have each their type in me : and the wide sky, And measureless ocean may declare as soon What oozy cavern or what wandering cloud Contains thy waters, as the universe Tell where these living thoughts reside, when stretched Upon thy flowers my bloodless limbs shall waste F the passing wind ! "

22 ALASTOR

Beside the grassy shore

Of the small stream he went ; he did impress On the green moss his tremulous step, that caught Strong shuddering from his burning limbs. As one Roused by some joyous madness from the couch Of fever, he did move ; yet, not like him, Forgetful of the grave, where, when the flame Of his frail exultation shall be spent, He must descend. With rapid steps he went Beneath the shade of trees, beside the flow Of the wild babbling rivulet ; and now The forest's solemn canopies were changed For the uniform and lightsome evening sky. Grey rocks did peep from the spare moss, and stemmed The struggling brook : tall spires of windlestrae Threw their thin shadows down the rugged slope, And nought but knarled roots of ancient pines, Branchless and blasted, clenched with grasping roots The unwilling soil. A gradual change was here, Yet ghastly. For, as fast years flow away, The smooth brow gathers, and the hair grows thin And white, and where irradiate dewy eyes Had shone, gleam stony orbs : — so from his steps Bright flowers departed, and the beautiful shade Of the green groves, with all their odorous winds And musical motions. Calm, he still pursued The stream, that with a larger volume now Rolled through the labyrinthine dell ; and there Fretted a path through its descending curves With its wintry speed. On every side now rose Rocks, which, in unimaginable forms, Lifted their black and barren pinnacles In the light of evening, and its precipice Obscuring the ravine, disclosed above, 'Mid toppling stones, black gulphs and yawning caves, Whose windings gave ten thousand various tongues To the loud stream. Lo ! where the pass expands

ALASTOR 23

Its stony jaws, the abrupt mountain breaks, And seems, with its accumulated crags, To overhang the world : for wide expand Beneath the wan stars and descending moon Islanded seas, blue mountains, mighty streams, Dim tracts and vast, robed in the lustrous gloom Of leaden-coloured even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight, on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene, In naked and severe simplicity, Made contrast with the universe. A pine, Rock-rooted, stretched athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response, at each pause In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder and the hiss of homeless streams Mingling its solemn song, whilst the broad river, Foaming and hurrying o'er its rugged path, Fell into that immeasurable void Scattering its waters to the passing winds.

Yet the grey precipice and solemn pine, And torrent, were not all ; — one silent nook Was there. Even on the edge of that vast mountain, Upheld by knotty roots and fallen rocks, It overlooked in its serenity The dark earth, and the bending vault of stars. It was a tranquil spot, that seemed to smile Even in the lap of horror. Ivy clasped The fissured stones with its entwining arms, And did embower with leaves for ever green, And berries dark, the smooth and even space Of its inviolated floor, and here The children of the autumnal whirlwind bore, In wanton sport, those bright leaves, whose decay, Red, yellow, or aetherially pale, Rivals the pride of summer. 'Tis the haunt

24 ALASTOR

Of every gentle wind, whose breath can teach

The wilds to love tranquillity. One step,

One human step alone, has ever broken

The stillness of its solitude : — one voice

Alone inspired its echoes ; — even that voice

Which hither came, floating among the winds,

And led the loveliest among human forms *

To make their wild haunts the depository

Of all the grace and beauty that endued

Its motions, render up its majesty,

Scatter its music on the unfeeling storm,

And to the damp leaves and blue cavern mould,

Nurses of rainbow flowers and branching moss,

Commit the colours of that varying cheek,

That snowy breast, those dark and drooping eyes.

The dim and horned moon hung low, and poured A sea of lustre on the horizon's verge That overflowed its mountains. Yellow mist Filled the unbounded atmosphere, and drank Wan moonlight even to fulness : not a star Shone, not a sound was heard ; the very winds, Danger's grim playmates, on that precipice Slept, clasped in his embrace. — O, storm of death ! Whose sightless speed divides this sullen night : And thou, colossal Skeleton, that, still Guiding its irresistible career In thy devastating omnipotence, Art king of this frail world, from the red field Of slaughter, from the reeking hospital, The patriot's sacred couch, the snowy bed Of innocence, the scaffold and the throne, A mighty voice invokes thee. Ruin calls His brother Death. A rare and regal prey He hath prepared, prowling around the world ; Glutted with which thou mayst repose, and men Go to their graves like flowers or creeping worms,

ALASTOR 25

Nor ever more offer at thy dark shrine The unheeded tribute of a broken heart.

When on the threshold of the green recess The wanderer's footsteps fell, he knew that death Was on him. Yet a little, ere it fled, Did he resign his high and holy soul To images of the majestic past, That paused within his passive being now, Like winds that bear sweet music, when they breathe Through some dim latticed chamber. He did place His pale lean hand upon the rugged trunk Of the old pine. Upon an ivied stone Reclined his languid head, his limbs did rest, Diffused and motionless, on the smooth brink Of that obscurest chasm ; — and thus he lay, Surrendering to their final impulses The hovering powers of life. Hope and despair, The torturers, slept ; no mortal pain or fear Marred his repose, the influxes of sense, And his own being unalloyed by pain, Yet feebler and more feeble, calmly fed The stream of thought, till he lay breathing there At peace, and faintly smiling : — his last sight Was the great moon, which o'er the western line Of the wide world her mighty horn suspended, With whose dun beams inwoven darkness seemed To mingle. Now upon the jagged hills It rests, and still as the divided frame Of the vast meteor sunk, the Poet's blood, That ever beat in mystic sympathy With nature's ebb and flow, grew feebler still : And when two lessening points of light alone Gleamed through the darkness, the alternate gasp Of his faint respiration scarce did stir The stagnate night : — till the minutest ray Was quenched, the pulse yet lingered in his heart.

26 ALASTOR

It paused — it fluttered. But when heaven remained

Utterly black, the murky shades involved

An image, silent, cold, and motionless,

As their own voiceless earth and vacant air.

Even as a vapour fed with golden beams

That ministered on sunlight, ere the west

Eclipses it, was now that wondrous frame —

No sense, no motion, no divinity —

A fragile lute, on whose harmonious strings

The breath of heaven did wander — a bright stream

Once fed with many-voiced waves — a dream

Of youth, which night and time have quenched for ever,

Still, dark, and dry, and unremembered now.

O, for Medea's wondrous alchemy, Which wheresoe'er it fell made the earth gleam With bright flowers, and the wintry boughs exhale From vernal blooms fresh fragrance ! O, that God, Profuse of poisons, would concede the chalice Which but one living man has drained, who now, Vessel of deathless wrath, a slave that feels No proud exemption in the blighting curse He bears, over the world wanders for ever, Lone as incarnate death ! O, that the dream Of dark magician in his visioned cave, Raking the cinders of a crucible For life and power, even when his feeble hand Shakes in its last decay, were the true law Of this so lovely world ! But thou art fled Like some frail exhalation ; which the dawn Robes in its golden beams, — ah ! thou hast fled ! The brave, the gentle, and the beautiful, The child of grace and genius. Heartless things Are done and said i' the world, and many worms And beasts and men live on, and mighty Earth From sea and mountain, city and wilderness, In vesper low or joyous orison,

ALASTOR 27

Lifts still its solemn voice : — but thou art fled —

Thou canst no longer know or love the shapes

Of this phantasmal scene, who have to thee

Been purest ministers, who are, alas !

Now thou art not. Upon those pallid lips

So sweet even in their silence, on those eyes

That image sleep in death, upon that form

Yet safe from the worm's outrage, let no tear

Be shed — not even in thought. Nor, when those hues

Are gone, and those divinest lineaments,

Worn by the senseless wind, shall live alone

In the frail pauses of this simple strain,

Let not high verse, mourning the memory

Of that which is no more, or painting's woe

Or sculpture, speak in feeble imagery

Their own cold powers. Art and eloquence,

And all the shows o' the world are frail and vain

To weep a loss that turns their lights to shade.

It is a woe too * deep for tears,' when all

Is reft at once, when some surpassing Spirit,

Whose light adorned the world around it, leaves

Those who remain behind, not sobs or groans,

The passionate tumult of a clinging hope ;

But pale despair and cold tranquillity,

Nature's vast frame, the web of human things,

Birth and the grave, that are not as they were.

THEIND

MISCELLANEOUS

POEMS

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

A SUMMER-EVENING CHURCH-YARD LECHLADE, GLOUCESTERSHIRE

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray ;

And pallid evening twines its beaming hair

In duskier braids around the languid eyes of day :

Silence and twilight, unbeloved of men,

Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day, Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea ;

Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway, Responding to the charm with its own mystery.

The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

D

34

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Thou too, aerial Pile ! whose pinnacles

Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,

Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,

Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

Around whose lessening and invisible height

Gather among the stars the clouds of night

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres :

And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound

Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs, Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

And mingling with the still night and mute sky

Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

And terrorless as this serenest night : Here could I hope, like some enquiring child

Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human

sight

Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

TO COLERIDGE AAKPTII AlOISa IIOTMON AIIOTMON

O ! THERE are spirits of the air,

And genii of the evening breeze, And gentle ghosts, with eyes as fair

As star-beams among twilight trees : — Such lovely ministers to meet Oft hast thou turned from men thy lonely feet.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 35

With mountain winds, and babbling springs, And moonlight seas, that are the voice

Of these inexplicable things,

Thou didst hold commune, and rejoice

When they did answer thee ; but they

Cast, like a worthless boon, thy love away.

And thou hast sought in starry eyes Beams that were never meant for thine,

Another's wealth : — tame sacrifice To a fond faith ! still dost thou pine ?

Still dost thou hope that greeting hands,

Voice, looks, or lips, may answer thy demands ?

Ah ! wherefore didst thou build thine hope

On the false earth's inconstancy ? Did thine own mind afford no scope

Of love, or moving thoughts to thee ? That natural scenes or human smiles Could steal the power to wind thee in their wiles.

Yes, all the faithless smiles are fled

Whose falsehood left thee broken-hearted ;

The glory of the moon is dead ;

Night's ghosts and dreams have now departed ;

Thine own soul still is true to thee,

But changed to a foul fiend through misery.

This fiend, whose ghastly presence ever

Beside thee like thy shadow hangs, Dream not to chase ; — the mad endeavour

Would scourge thee to severer pangs. Be as thou art. Thy settled fate, Dark as it is, all change would aggravate.

36 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

TO WORDSWORTH

POET of Nature, thou hast wept to know

That things depart which never may return : Childhood and youth, friendship and love's first glow,

Have fled like sweet dreams, leaving thee to mourn. These common woes I feel. One loss is mine

Which thou too feel'st, yet I alone deplore. Thou wert as a lone star, whose light did shine

On some frail bark in winter's midnight roar : Thou hast like to a rock-built refuge stood Above the blind and battling multitude : In honoured poverty thy voice did weave

Songs consecrate to truth and liberty, — Deserting these, thou leavest me to grieve,

Thus having been, that thou shouldst cease to be,

SONNET

OZYMANDIAS

I MET a traveller from an antique land Who said : Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed And on the pedestal these words appear : " My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair ! " Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 37

HYMN TO INTELLECTUAL BEAUTY

i

THE awful shadow of some unseen Power Floats though unseen amongst us, — visiting This various world with an inconstant wing As summer winds that creep from flower to flower, — Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain

shower,

It visits with inconstant glance Each human heart and countenance; Like hues and harmonies of evening, —

Like clouds in starlight widely spread, — Like memory of music fled, — Like aught that for its grace may be Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

2 Spirit of BEAUTY, that dost consecrate

With thine own hues all thou dost shine upon Of human thought or form, — where art thou gone ? Why dost thou pass away and leave our state, This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and desolate ? Ask why the sunlight not for ever Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain river, Why aught should fail and fade that once is shown. Why fear and dream and death and birth Cast on the daylight of this earth Such gloom, — why man has such a scope For love and hate, despondency and hope ?

3

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever To sage or poet these responses given — Therefore the names of Demon, Ghost, and Heaven,

Remain the records of their vain endeavour,

38 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not avail to sever,

From all we hear and all we see,

Doubt, chance, and mutability. Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains driven,

Or music by the night wind sent,

Through strings of some still instrument,

Or moonlight on a midnight stream, Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream.

4

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart And come, for some uncertain moments lent. Man were immortal, and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart. Thou messenger of sympathies, That wax and wane in lovers' eyes — Thou — that to human thought art nourishment, Like darkness to a dying flame ! Depart not as thy shadow came, Depart not — lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.

5 While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and sped

Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin, And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. I called on poisonous names with which our youth is fed, I was not heard — I saw them not — When musing deeply on the lot Of life, at the sweet time when winds are wooing All vital things that wake to bring News of birds and blossoming, — Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy !

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 39

6 I vowed that I would dedicate my powers

To thee and thine — have I not kept the vow ? With beating heart and streaming eyes, even now I call the phantoms of a thousand hours Each from his voiceless grave : they have in visioned

bowers

Of studious zeal or love's delight Outwatched with me the envious night — They know that never joy illumed my brow Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst free This world from its dark slavery, That thou — O awful LOVELINESS, Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot express.

7

The day becomes more solemn and serene When noon is past — there is a harmony In autumn, and a lustre in its sky, Which through the summer is not heard or seen, As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! Thus let thy power, which like the truth Of nature on my passive youth Descended, to my onward life supply Its calm — to one who worships thee, And every form containing thee, Whom, SPIRIT fair, thy spells did bind To fear himself, and love all human kind.

LINES WRITTEN

AMONG HILLS

THE EUGANEAN

OCTOBER, 1818

MANY a green isle needs must be In the deep wide sea of misery, Or the mariner, worn and wan, Never thus could voyage on Day and night, and night and day, Drifting on his dreary way, With the solid darkness black Closing round his vessel's track ; Whilst above the sunless sky, Big with clouds, hangs heavily, And behind the tempest fleet Hurries on with lightning feet, Riving sail, and cord, and plank, Till the ship has almost drank Death from the o'er-brimming deep ; And sinks down, down, like that sleep When the dreamer seems to be Weltering through eternity ; And the dim low line before Of a dark and distant shore

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Still recedes, as ever still

Longing with divided will,

But no power to seek or shun,

He is ever drifted on

O'er the unreposing wave

To the haven of the grave.

What if there no friends will greet ;

What if there no heart will meet

His with love's impatient beat ;

Wander wheresoe'er he may,

Can he dream before that day

To find refuge from distress

In friendship's smile, in love's caress ?

Then 'twill wreak him little woe

Whether such there be or no :

Senseless is the breast, and cold,

Which relenting love would fold ;

Bloodless are the veins and chill

Which the pulse of pain did fill ;

Every little living nerve

That from bitter words did swerve

Round the tortured lips and brow,

Are like sapless leaflets now

Frozen upon December's bough.

On the beach of a northern sea

Which tempests shake eternally,

As once the wretch there lay to sleep,

Lies a solitary heap,

One white skull and seven dry bones,

On the margin of the stones,

Where a few grey rushes stand,

Boundaries of the sea and land :

Nor is heard one voice of wail

But the sea-mews', as they sail

O'er the billows of the gale ;

Or the whirlwind up and down

Howling like a slaughtered town,

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When a king in glory rides

Through the pomp of fratricides :

Those unburied bones around

There is many a mournful sound ;

There is no lament for him,

Like a sunless vapour, dim,

Who once clothed with life and thought

What now moves nor murmurs not.

Aye, many flowering islands lie

In the waters of wide Agony :

To such a one this morn was led,

My bark by soft winds piloted :

'Mid the mountains Euganean

I stood listening to the paean,

With which the legioned rooks did hail

The sun's uprise majestical ;

Gathering round with wings all hoar,

Through the dewy mist they soar

Like grey shades, till the eastern heaven

Bursts, and then, as clouds of even,

Flecked with fire and azure, lie

In the unfathomable sky,

So their plumes of purple grain,

Starred with drops of golden rain,

Gleam above the sunlit woods,

As in silent multitudes

On the morning's fitful gale

Through the broken mist they sail,

And the vapours cloven and gleaming

Follow down the dark steep streaming,

Till all is bright, and clear, and still,

Round the solitary hill.

Beneath is spread like a green sea The waveless plain of Lombardy, Bounded by the vaporous air,

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Islanded by cities fair ; Underneath day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies, A peopled labyrinth of walls, Amphitrite's destined halls, Which her hoary sire now paves With his blue and beaming waves. Lo ! the sun upsprings behind, Broad, red, radiant, half reclined On the level quivering line Of the waters crystalline ; And before that chasm of light, As within a furnace bright, Column, tower, and dome, and spire, Shine like obelisks of fire, Pointing with inconstant motion From the altar of dark ocean To the sapphire-tinted skies ; As the flames of sacrifice From the marble shrines did rise, As to pierce the dome of gold Where Apollo spoke of old.

Sun-girt City, thou hast been Ocean's child, and then his queen ; Now is come a darker day, And thou soon must be his prey, If the power that raised thee here Hallow so thy watery bier. A less drear ruin then than now, With thy conquest-branded brow Stooping to the slave of slaves From thy throne, among the waves Wilt thou be, when the sea-mew Flies, as once before it flew, O'er thine isles depopulate, And all is in its ancient state,

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Save where many a palace gate With green sea-flowers overgrown Like a rock of ocean's own, Topples o'er the abandoned sea As the tides change sullenly. The fisher on his watery way, Wandering at the close of day, Will spread his sail and seize his oar Till he pass the gloomy shore, Lest thy dead should, from their sleep Bursting o'er the starlight deep, Lead a rapid masque of death O'er the waters of his path.

Those who alone thy towers behold Quivering through aerial gold, As I now behold them here, Would imagine not they were Sepulchres, where human forms, Like pollution-nourished worms To the corpse of greatness cling, Murdered, and now mouldering : But if Freedom should awake In her omnipotence, and shake From the Celtic Anarch's hold All the keys of dungeons cold, Where a hundred cities lie Chained like thee, ingloriously, Thou and all thy sister band Might adorn this sunny land, Twining memories of old time With new virtues more sublime ; If not, perish thou and they, Clouds which stain truth's rising day By her sun consumed away, Earth can spare ye : while like flowers, In the waste of years and hours,

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From your dust new nations spring With more kindly blossoming. Perish — let there only be Floating o'er thy hearthless sea, As the garment of thy sky Clothes the world immortally, One remembrance, more sublime Than the tattered pall of time, Which scarce hides thy visage wan ; — That a tempest-cleaving Swan Of the songs of Albion, Driven from his ancestral streams By the might of evil dreams, Found a nest in thee ; and Ocean Welcomed him with such emotion That its joy grew his, and sprung From his lips like music flung O'er a mighty thunder-fit Chastening terror : — what though yet Poesy's unfailing River, Which through Albion winds for ever Lashing with melodious wave Many a sacred Poet's grave, Mourn its latest nursling fled ? What though thou with all thy dead Scarce can for this fame repay Aught thine own ? oh, rather say Though thy sins and slaveries foul Overcloud a sunlike soul ? As the ghost of Homer clings Round Scamander's wasting springs ; As divinest Shakespeare's might Fills Avon and the world with light Like omniscient power which he Imaged 'mid mortality ; As the love from Petrarch's urn, Yet amid yon hills doth burn,

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A quenchless lamp by which the heart Sees things unearthly ; — so thou art, Mighty spirit — so shall be The City that did refuge thee.

Lo, the sun floats up the sky Like thought-winged Liberty, Till the universal light Seems to level plain and height ; From the sea a mist has spread, And the beams of morn lie dead On the towers of Venice now, Like its glory long ago. By the skirts of that grey cloud Many-domed Padua proud Stands, a peopled solitude, 'Mid the harvest-shining plain, Where the peasant heaps his grain In the garner of his foe, And the milk-white oxen slow With the purple vintage strain, Heaped upon the creaking wain, That the brutal Celt may swill Drunken sleep with savage will ; And the sickle to the sword Lies unchanged, though many a lord, Like a weed whose shade is poison, Overgrows this region's foison, Sheaves of whom are ripe to come To destruction's harvest home : Men must reap the things they sow, Force from force must ever flow, Or worse ; but 'tis a bitter woe That love or reason cannot change The despot's rage, the slave's revenge.

Padua, thou within whose walls

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Those mute guests at festivals. Son and Mother, Death and Sin, Played at dice for Ezzelin, Till Death cried, " I win, I win ! " And Sin cursed to lose the wager, But Death promised, to assuage her, That he would petition for Her to be made Vice-Emperor, When the destined years were o'er Over all between the Po And the eastern Alpine snow, Under the mighty Austrian. Sin smiled so as Sin only can, And since that time, aye, long before, Both have ruled from shore to shore, That incestuous pair, who follow Tyrants as the sun the swallow, As Repentance follows Crime, And as changes follow Time.

In thine halls the lamp of learning,

Padua, now no more is burning ;

Like a meteor, whose wild way

Is lost over the grave of day,

It gleams betrayed and to betray :

Once remotest nations came

To adore that sacred flame,

When it lit not many a hearth

On this cold and gloomy earth :

Now new fires from antique light

Spring beneath the wide world's might ;

But their spark lies dead in thee,

Trampled out by tyranny.

As the Norway woodman quells,

In the depth of piny dells,

One light flame among the brakes

While the boundless forest shakes

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And its mighty trunks are torn By the fire thus lowly born : The spark beneath his feet is dead, He starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear : so thou, O Tyranny, beholdest now Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest : Grovel on the earth : aye, hide In the dust thy purple pride !

Noon descends around me now : 'Tis the noon of autumn's glow, When a soft and purple mist Like a vaporous amethyst, Or an air-dissolved star Mingling light and fragrance, far From the curved horizon's bound To the point of heaven's profound, Fills the overflowing sky ; And the plains that silent lie Underneath, the leaves unsodden Where the infant frost has trodden With his morning-winged feet, Whose bright print is gleaming yet ; And the red and golden vines, Piercing with their trellised lines The rough, dark-skirted wilderness ; The dun and bladed grass no less, Pointing from this hoary tower In the windless air ; the flower Glimmering at my feet ; the line Of the olive-sandalled Apennine In the south dimly islanded ; And the Alps, whose snows are spread

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High between the clouds and sun ;

And of living things each one ;

And my spirit which so long

Darkened this swift stream of song,

Interpenetrated lie

By the glory of the sky :

Be it love, light, harmony,

Odour, or the soul of all

Which from heaven like dew doth fall,

Or the mind which feeds this verse

Peopling the lone universe.

Noon descends, and after noon Autumn's evening meets me soon, Leading the infantine moon, And that one star, which to her Almost seems to minister Half the crimson light she brings From the sunset's radiant springs : And the soft dreams of the morn, (Which like winged winds had borne To that silent isle, which lies 'Mid remembered agonies, The frail bark of this lone being,) Pass, to other sufferers fleeing, And its ancient pilot, Pain, Sits beside the helm again.

Other flowering isles must be In the sea of life and agony : Other spirits float and flee O'er that gulph : even now, perhaps, On some rock the wild wave wraps, With folding wings they waiting sit For my bark, to pilot it To some calm and blooming cove, Where for me, and those I love, E

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May a windless bower be built,

Far from passion, pain, and guilt,

In a dell 'mid lawny hills,

Which the wild sea-murmur fills,

And soft sunshine, and the sound

Of old forests echoing round,

And the light and smell divine

Of all flowers that breathe and shine :

We may live so happy there,

That the spirits of the air,

Envying us, may even entice

To our healing paradise

The polluting multitude ;

But their rage would be subdued

By that clime divine and calm,

And the winds whose wings rain balm

On the uplifted soul, and leaves

Under which the bright sea heaves ;

While each breathless interval

In their whisperings musical

The inspired soul supplies

With its own deep melodies,

And the love which heals all strife

Circling, like the breath of life,

All things in that sweet abode

With its own mild brotherhood :

They, not it, would change ; and soon

Every sprite beneath the moon

Would repent its envy vain,

And the earth grow young again.

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STANZAS, WRITTEN IN DEJECTION NEAR NAPLES

I THE sun is warm, the sky is clear,

The waves are dancing fast and bright, Blue isles and snowy mountains wear

The purple noon's transparent might,

The breath of the moist earth is light, Around its unexpanded buds ;

Like many a voice of one delight,

The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,

The City's voice itself is soft like Solitude's.

II I see the Deep's untrampled floor

With green and purple seaweeds strown ; I see the waves upon the shore,

Like light dissolved in star-showers, thrown :

I sit upon the sands alone, The lightning of the noon-tide ocean

Is flashing round me, and a tone Arises from its measured motion, How sweet ! did any heart now share in my emotion.

Ill Alas ! I have nor hope nor health,

Nor peace within nor calm around, Nor that content surpassing wealth

The sage in meditation found,

And walked with inward glory crowned — Nor fame, nor power, nor love, nor leisure.

Others I see whom these surround — Smiling they live, and call life pleasure ; — To me that cup has been dealt in another measure.

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IV

Yet now despair itself is mild,

Even as the winds and waters are ;

I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear,

Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air

My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Some might lament that I were cold,

As I, when this sweet day is gone, Which my lost heart, too soon grown old,

Insults with this untimely moan ;

They might lament — for I am one Whom men love not, — and yet regret,

Unlike this day, which, when the sun Shall on its stainless glory set, Will linger, though enjoyed, like joy in memory yet.

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SONNET

LIFT not the painted veil which those who live Call Life : though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread, — behind, lurk Fear And Hope, twin destinies ; who ever weave Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear. I knew one who had lifted it — he sought, For his lost heart was tender, things to love, But found them not, alas ! nor was there aught The world contains, the which he could approve. Through the unheeding many he did move, A splendour among shadows, a bright blot Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

I

O, WILD West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,

Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes : O, thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and low, Each like a corpse within its grave, until Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow

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Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill (Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air) With living hues and odours plain and hill :

Wild Spirit, which art moving every where ; Destroyer and preserver ; hear, O, hear !

II

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion, Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed, Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning : there are spread On the blue surface of thine airy surge, Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

Of the horizon to the zenith's height

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night Will be the dome of a vast sepulchre, Vaulted with all thy congregated might

Of vapours, from whose solid atmosphere Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : O, hear !

Ill

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreams The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,

Beside a pumice isle in Baiae's bay, And saw in sleep old palaces and towers Quivering within the wave's intenser day,

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All overgrown with azure moss and flowers

So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! Thou

For whose path the Atlantic's level powers

Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wear The sapless foliage of the ocean, know

Thy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear, And tremble and despoil themselves : O, hear !

IV

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share

The impulse of thy strength, only less free Than thou, O, uncontrollable ! If even I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed !

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed One too like thee : tameless, and swift, and proud.

v

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : What if my leaves are falling like its own ! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies

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Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, spirit fierce, My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one !

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! And, by the incantation of this verse,

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! Be through my lips to unawakened earth

The trumpet of a prophecy ! O, wind,

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ?

THE SENSITIVE PLANT

PART FIRST

A SENSITIVE Plant in a garden grew, And the young winds fed it with silver dew, And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, And closed them beneath the kisses of night.

And the Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt every where ; And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

But none ever trembled and panted with bliss In the garden, the field, or the wilderness, Like a doe in the noon-tide with love's sweet want, As the companionless Sensitive Plant.

The snow-drop, and then the violet, Arose from the ground with warm rain wet, And their breath was mixed with fresh odour, sent From the turf, like the voice and the instrument.

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Then the pied wind-flowers and the tulip tall, And narcissi, the fairest among them all, Who gaze on their eyes in the stream's recess, Till they die of their own dear loveliness ;

And the Naiad-like lily of the vale, Whom youth makes so fair and passion so pale, That the light of its tremulous bells is seen Through their pavilions of tender green ;

And the hyacinth purple, and white, and blue, Which flung from its bells a sweet peal anew Of music so delicate, soft, and intense, It was felt like an odour within the sense ;

And the rose like a nymph to the bath addressed, Which unveiled the depth of her glowing breast, Till, fold after fold, to the fainting air The soul of her beauty and love lay bare :

And the wand-like lily, which lifted up, As a Maenad, its moonlight-coloured cup, Till the fiery star, which is its eye, Gazed through clear dew on the tender sky ;

And the jessamine faint, and the sweet tuberose, The sweetest flower for scent that blows ; And all rare blossoms from every clime Grew in that garden in perfect prime.

And on the stream whose inconstant bosom Was prankt under boughs of embowering blossom, With golden and green light, slanting through Their heaven of many a tangled hue,

Broad water lilies lay tremulously, And starry river-buds glimmered by,

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And around them the soft stream did glide and dance With a motion of sweet sound and radiance.

And the sinuous paths of lawn and of moss, Which led through the garden along and across, Some open at once to the sun and the breeze, Some lost among bowers of blossoming trees,

Were all paved with daisies and delicate bells As fair as the fabulous asphodels, And flowrets which drooping as day drooped too Fell into pavilions, white, purple, and blue, To roof the glow-worm from the evening dew

And from this undefiled Paradise The flowers (as an infant's awakening eyes Smile on its mother, whose singing sweet Can first lull, and at last must awaken it),

When Heaven's blithe winds had unfolded them, As mine-lamps enkindle a hidden gem, Shone smiling to Heaven, and every one Shared joy in the light of the gentle sun ;

For each one was interpenetrated With the light and the odour its neighbour shed, Like young lovers whom youth and love make dear Wrapped and filled by their mutual atmosphere.

But the Sensitive Plant, which could give small fruit Of the love which it felt from the leaf to the root, Received more than all, — it loved more than ever, Where none wanted but it, could belong to the giver :

For the Sensitive Plant has no bright flower ; Radiance and odour are not its dower ; It loves, even like Love ; its deep heart is full ; It desires what it has not, the beautiful !

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The light winds which from unsustaining wings Shed the music of many murmurings ; The beams which dart from many a star Of the flowers whose hues they bear afar ;

The plumed insects swift and free, Like golden boats on a sunny sea, Laden with light and odour, which pass Over the gleam of the living grass ;

The unseen clouds of the dew, which lie Like fire in the flowers till the sun rides high, Then wander like spirits among the spheres, Each cloud faint with the fragrance it bears ;

The quivering vapours of dim noontide, Which like a sea o'er the warm earth glide, In which every sound, and odour, and beam, Move, as reeds in a single stream ;

Each and all like ministering angels were For the Sensitive Plant sweet joy to bear, Whilst the lagging hours of the day went by Like windless clouds o'er a tender sky.

And when evening descended from heaven above, And the Earth was all rest, and the air was all love, And delight, though less bright, was far more deep, And the day's veil fell from the world of sleep,

And the beasts, and the birds, and the insects were

drowned

In an ocean of dreams without a sound ; Whose waves never mark, though they ever impress The light sand which paves it, consciousness ;

(Only over head the sweet nightingale Ever sang more sweet as the day might fail,

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And snatches of its Elysian chant

Were mixed with the dreams of the Sensitive Plant.)

The Sensitive Plant was the earliest Up-gathered into the bosom of rest ; A sweet child weary of its delight, The feeblest and yet the favourite, Cradled within the embrace of night.

PART SECOND

There was a Power in this sweet place,

An Eve in this Eden ; a ruling grace

Which to the flowers, did they waken or dream,

Was as God is to the starry scheme.

A Lady, the wonder of her kind, Whose form was upborne by a lovely mind Which, dilating, had moulded her mien and motion Like a sea-flower unfolded beneath the ocean,

Tended the garden from morn to even : And the meteors of that sublunar heaven, Like the lamps of the air when night walks forth, Laughed round her footsteps up from the Earth !

She had no companion of mortal race, But her tremulous breath and her flushing face Told, whilst the morn kissed the sleep from her eyes, That her dreams were less slumber than Paradise :

As if some bright Spirit for her sweet sake

Had deserted heaven while the stars were awake,

As if yet around her he lingering were,

Though the veil of daylight concealed him from her.

Her step seemed to pity the grass it pressed ; You might hear by the heaving of her breast,

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That the coming and going of the wind Brought pleasure there and left passion behind.

And wherever her airy footsteps trod, Her trailing hair from the grassy sod Erased its light vestige, with shadowy sweep, Like a sunny storm o'er the dark green deep.

I doubt not the flowers of that garden sweet Rejoiced in the sound of her gentle feet ; I doubt not they felt the spirit that came From her glowing fingers through all their frame.

She sprinkled bright water from the stream On those that were faint with the sunny beam ; And out of the cups of the heavy flowers She emptied the rain of the thunder showers.

She lifted their heads with her tender hands, And sustained them with rods and ozier bands ; If the flowers had been her own infants she Could never have nursed them more tenderly.

And all killing insects and gnawing worms, And things of obscene and unlovely forms, She bore in a basket of Indian woof, Into the rough woods far aloof,

In a basket, of grasses and wild flowers full, The freshest her gentle hands could pull For the poor banished insects, whose intent, Although they did ill, was innocent.

But the bee and the beamlike ephemeris Whose path is the lightning's, and soft moths that kiss The sweet lips of the flowers, and harm not, did she Make her attendant angels be.

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And many an antenatal tomb, Where butterflies dream of the life to come, She left clinging round the smooth and dark Edge of the odorous cedar bark.

This fairest creature from earliest spring Thus moved through the garden ministering All the sweet season of summer tide, And ere the first leaf looked brown — she died !

PART THIRD

Three days the flowers of the garden fair Like stars when the moon is awakened were, Or the waves of Baiae, ere luminous She floats up through the smoke of Vesuvius.

And on the fourth, the Sensitive Plant Felt the sound of the funeral chaunt, And the steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, And the sobs of the mourners deep and low ;

The weary sound and the heavy breath, And the silent motions of passing death, And the smell, cold, oppressive, and dank, Sent through the pores of the coffin plank ;

The dark grass, and the flowers among the grass, Were bright with tears as the crowd did pass ; From their sighs the wind caught a mournful tone, And sate in the pines, and gave groan for groan.

The garden, once fair, became cold and foul, Like the corpse of her who had been its soul, Which at first was lovely as if in sleep, Then slowly changed, till it grew a heap To make men tremble who never weep.

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Swift summer into the autumn flowed, And frost in the mist of morning rode, Though the noonday sun looked clear and bright, Mocking the spoil of the secret night.

The rose leaves, like flakes of crimson snow, Paved the turf and the moss below. The lilies were drooping, and white, and wan, Like the head and the skin of a dying man.

And Indian plants, of scent and hue The sweetest that ever were fed on dew, Leaf by leaf, day after day, Were massed into the common clay.

And the leaves, brown, yellow, and grey, and red, And white with the whiteness of what is dead, Like troops of ghosts on the dry wind passed ; Their whistling noise made the birds aghast.

And the gusty winds waked the winged seeds, Out of their birthplace of ugly weeds, Till they clung round many a sweet flower's stem, Which rotted into the earth with them.

The water-blooms under the rivulet Fell from the stalks on which they were set ; And the eddies drove them here and there, As the winds did those of the upper air.

Then the rain came down, and the broken stalks Were bent and tangled across the walks ; And the leafless net- work of parasite bowers Massed into ruin ; and all sweet flowers.

Between the time of the wind and the snow, All loathliest weeds began to grow,

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Whose coarse leaves were splashed with many a speck, Like the water-snake's belly and the toad's back.

And thistles, and nettles, and darnels rank, And the dock, and henbane, and hemlock dank, Stretched out its long and hollow shank, And stifled the air till the dead wind stank.

And plants, at whose names the verse feels loath, Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, Prickly, and pulpous, and blistering, and blue, Livid, and starred with a lurid dew.

And agarics, and fungi, with mildew and mould Started like mist from the wet ground cold ; Pale, fleshy, as if the decaying dead With a spirit of growth had been animated !

Spawn, weeds, and filth, a leprous scum,

Made the running rivulet thick and dumb

And at its outlet flags huge as stakes

Dammed it up with roots knotted like water-snakes.

And hour by hour, when the air was still, The vapours arose which have strength to kill : At morn they were seen, at noon they were felt, At night they were darkness no star could melt.

And unctuous meteors from spray to spray Crept and flitted in broad noon-day Unseen ; every branch on which they alit By a venomous blight was burned and bit.

The Sensitive Plant like one forbid Wept, and the tears within each lid Of its folded leaves which together grew Were changed to a blight of frozen glue.

F

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For the leaves soon fell, and the branches soon By the heavy axe of the blast were hewn ; The sap shrank to the root through every pore As blood to a heart that will beat no more.

For Winter came : the wind was his whip : One choppy finger was on his lip : He had torn the cataracts from the hills And they clanked at his girdle like manacles ;

His breath was a chain which without a sound The earth, and the air, and the water bound ; He came, fiercely driven, in his chariot-throne, By the tenfold blasts of the arctic zone.

Then the weeds which were forms of living death Fled from the frost to the earth beneath. Their decay and sudden flight from frost Was but like the vanishing of a ghost !

And under the roots of the Sensitive Plant The moles and the dormice died for want : The birds dropped stiff from the frozen air And were caught in the branches naked and bare.

First there came down a thawing rain And its dull drops froze on the boughs again ; Then there steamed up a freezing dew Which to the drops of the thaw-rain grew ;

And a northern whirlwind, wandering about Like a wolf that had smelt a dead child out, Shook the boughs thus laden, and heavy and stiff, And snapped them off with his rigid griff.

When winter had gone and spring came back The Sensitive Plant was a leafless wreck :

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But the mandrakes, and toadstools, and docks, and

darnels, Rose like the dead from their ruined charnels.

CONCLUSION

Whether the Sensitive Plant, or that Which within its boughs like a spirit sat Ere its outward form had known decay, Now felt this change, I cannot say.

Whether that Lady's gentle mind, No longer with the form combined Which scattered love, as stars do light, Found sadness, where it left delight,

I dare not guess ; but in this life Of error, ignorance, and strife, Where nothing is, but all things seem, And we the shadows of the dream,

It is a modest creed, and yet Pleasant if one considers it, To own that death itself must be, Like all the rest, a mockery.

That garden sweet, that Lady fair, And all sweet shapes and odours there, In truth have never passed away : 'Tis we, 'tis ours, are changed ; not they.

For love, and beauty, and delight, There is no death nor change : their might Exceeds our organs, which endure No light, being themselves obscure.

I BRING fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,

From the seas and the streams ; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,

And their great pines groan aghast ; And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast. Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,

Lightning my pilot sits ; In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,

It struggles and howls at fits ; Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,

This pilot is guiding me, Lured by the love of the genii that move

In the depths of the purple sea ; Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,

Over the lakes and the plains,

THE CLOUD

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Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,

The Spirit he loves remains ; And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,

Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,

And his burning plumes outspread, Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead, As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings, An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings. And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love, And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above, With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,

As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

Whom mortals call the moon, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,

By the midnight breezes strewn ; And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,

Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,

The stars peep behind her and peer ; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

I bind the sun's throne with the burning zone, And the moon's with a girdle of pearl ;

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The volcanos are dim, and the stars reel and swim,

When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl. From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea, Sunbeam-proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be. The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow, When the powers of the air are chained to my chair,

Is the million-coloured bow ; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky ; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores ;

I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain when, with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams

Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,

I arise and unbuild it again.

1 0 A SK?f LAR.KJ

HAIL to thee, blithe spirit !

Bird thou never wert, That from heaven, or near it,

Pourest thy full heart In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest Like a cloud of fire ;

The blue deep thou wingest, And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

In the golden lightning

Of the sunken sun, O'er which the clouds are brightning,

Thou dost float and run ; Like an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

74

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The pale purple even

Melts around thy flight ; Like a star of heaven

In the broad day-light Thou art unseen, but yet I hear thy shrill delight,

Keen as are the arrows Of that silver sphere, Whose intense lamp narrows

In the white dawn clear, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.

All the earth and air

With thy voice is loud, As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is overflowed

What thou art we know not ;

What is most like thee ? From rainbow clouds there flow not

Drops so bright to see As from thy presence showers a rain of melody.

Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought, Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not :

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower, Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower

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Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew, Scattering unbeholden

Its aerial hue

Among the flowers and grass which screen it from the view :

Like a rose embowered

In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered,

Till the scent it gives

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavy-winged thieves.

Sound of vernal showers

On the twinkling grass, Rain-awakened flowers,

All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

What sweet thoughts are thine ; I have never heard

Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine :

Chorus Hymenaeal,

Or triumphal chaunt, Matched with thine, would be all

But an empty vaunt, A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want.

What objects are the fountains

Of thy happy strain ? What fields, or waves, or mountains ?

What shapes of sky or plain ? What love of thine own kind ? what ignorance of pain ?

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With thy clear keen joyance

Languor cannot be : Shadow of annoyance

Never came near thee : Thou lovest ; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

Waking or asleep,

Thou of death must deem Things more true and deep

Than we mortals dream, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ?

We look before and after

And pine for what is not : Our sincerest laughter

With some pain is fraught ; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear ; If we were things born

Not to shed a tear, I know not how thy joy we ever should come near.

Better than all measures

Of delightful sound, Better than all treasures

That in books are found, Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground !

Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know, Such harmonious madness

From my lips would flow, The world should listen then, as I am listening now.

ARETHUSA

ARETHUSA arose

From her couch of snows

In the Acroceraunian mountains, — From cloud and from crag, With many a jag,

Shepherding her bright fountains. She leapt down the rocks, With her rainbow locks

Streaming among the streams ; — Her steps paved with green The downward ravine

Which slopes to the western gleams And gliding and springing She went, ever singing,

In murmurs as soft as sleep ;

The Earth seemed to love her, And Heaven smiled above her,

As she lingered towards the deep.

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Then Alpheus bold,

On his glacier cold. With his trident the mountains strook

And opened a chasm

In the rocks ; — with the spasm All Erymanthus shook.

And the black south wind

It concealed behind The urns of the silent snow,

And earthquake and thunder

Did rend in sunder The bars of the springs below :

The beard and the hair

Of the River-god were Seen through the torrent's sweep,

As he followed the light

Of the fleet nymph's flight To the brink of the Dorian deep.

" Oh, save me ! Oh, guide me !

And bid the deep hide me, For he grasps me now by the hair !"

The loud Ocean heard,

To its blue depth stirred, And divided at her prayer ;

And under the water

The Earth's white daughter Fled like a sunny beam ;

Behind her descended

Her billows, unblended With the brackish Dorian stream : —

Like a gloomy stain

On the emerald main Alpheus rushed behind,—

As an eagle pursuing

A dove to its ruin Down the streams of the cloudy wind.

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Under the bowers

Where the Ocean Powers Sit on their pearled thrones,

Through the coral woods

Of the weltering floods, Over heaps of unvalued stones ;

Through the dim beams

Which amid the streams Weave a net-work of coloured light ;

And under the caves,

Where the shadowy waves Are as green as the forest's night : —

Outspeeding the shark

And the sword-fish dark, Under the ocean foam,

And up through the rifts

Of the mountain clifts They passed to their Dorian home.

And now from their fountains

In Enna's mountains, Down one vale where the morning basks,

Like friends once parted

Grown single-hearted, They ply their watery tasks.

At sunrise they leap

From their cradles steep In the cave of the shelving hill ;

At noon-tide they flow

Through the woods below And the meadows of Asphodel ;

And at night they sleep

In the rocking deep Beneath the Ortygian shore ; —

Like spirits that lie

In the azure sky

When they love but live no more. G

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HYMN OF APOLLO

I THE sleepless Hours who watch me as I lie,

Curtained with star-inwoven tapestries, From the broad moonlight of the sky,

Fanning the busy dreams from my dim eyes, — Waken me when their Mother, the grey Dawn, Tells them that dreams and that the moon is gone.

II Then I arise, and climbing Heaven's blue dome,

I walk over the mountains and the waves, Leaving my robe upon the ocean foam ;

My footsteps pave the clouds with fire ; the caves Are filled with my bright presence, and the air Leaves the green earth to my embraces bare.

Ill

The sunbeams are my shafts, with which I kill Deceit, that loves the night and fears the day ;

All men who do or even imagine ill Fly me, and from the glory of my ray

Good minds and open actions take new might,

Until diminished by the reign of night.

IV I feed the clouds, the rainbows and the flowers

With their aetherial colours ; the Moon's globe And the pure stars in their eternal bowers

Are cinctured with my power as with a robe ; Whatever lamps on Earth or Heaven may shine, Are portions of one power, which is mine.

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I stand at noon upon the peak of Heaven, Then with unwilling steps I wander down

Into the clouds of the Atlantic even ;

For grief that I depart they weep and frown :

What look is more delightful than the smile

With which I soothe them from the western isle ?

VI

I am the eye with which the Universe Beholds itself and knows itself divine ;

All harmony of instrument or verse, All prophecy, all medicine are mine,

All light of art or nature ; — to my song,

Victory and praise in their own right belong.

FROM the forests and highlands

We come, we come ; From the river-girt islands,

Where loud waves are dumb

Listening to my sweet pipings. The wind in the reeds and the rushes,

The bees on the bells of thyme The birds on the myrtle bushes, The cicale above in the lime, And the lizards below in the grass, Were as silent as ever old Tmolus was, Listening to my sweet pipings.

II

Liquid Peneus was flowing, And all dark Tempe lay

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In Pelion's shadow, outgrowing The light of the dying day,

Speeded by my sweet pipings. The Sileni, and Sylvans, and Fauns,

And the Nymphs of the woods and waves, To the edge of the moist river-lawns,

And the brink of the dewy caves, And all that did then attend and follow Were silent with love, as you now, Apollo, With envy of my sweet pipings.

Ill I sang of the dancing stars,

I sang of the daedal Earth, And of Heaven — and the giant wars, And Love, and Death, and Birth, —

And then I changed my pipings, — Singing how down the vale of Menalus

I pursued a maiden and clasped a reed : Gods and men, we are all deluded thus !

It breaks in our bosom and then we bleed : All wept, as I think both ye now would, If envy or age had not frozen your blood,

At the sorrow of my sweet pipings.

THE QUESTION

I I DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way,

Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring, And gentle odours led my steps astray,

Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay

Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling Its green arms round the bosom of the stream, But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream

88 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

II There grew pied wind-flowers and violets,

Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, The constellated flower that never sets ;

Faint oxlips ; tender bluebells, at whose birth The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets

(Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth) Its mother's face with heaven-collected tears, When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears.

Ill And in the warm hedge grew lush eglantine,

Green cowbind and the moonlight-coloured May, And cherry-blossoms, and white cups, whose wine

Was the bright dew, yet drained not by the day ; And wild roses, and ivy serpentine,

With its dark buds and leaves, wandering astray ; And flowers azure, black, and streaked with gold, Fairer than any wakened eyes behold.

IV And nearer to the river's trembling edge

There grew broad flag-flowers, purple prankt with white, And starry river-buds among the sedge,

And floating water-lilies, broad and bright, Which lit the oak that overhung the hedge

With moonlight beams of their own watery light ; And bulrushes and reeds of such deep green As soothed the dazzled eye with sober sheen.

v Methought that of these visionary flowers

I made a nosegay, bound in such a way That the same hues, which in their natural bowers

Were mingled or opposed, the like array Kept these imprisoned children of the Hours

Within my hand, — and then, elate and gay, I hastened to the spot whence I had come, That I might there present it ! — oh ! to whom ?

THE TWO SPIRITS: AN ALLEGORY

FIRST SPIRIT

O THOU, who plumed with strong desire Wouldst float above the earth, beware ! A Shadow tracks thy flight of fire —

Night is coming ! Bright are the regions of the air, And among the winds and beams It were delight to wander there — Night is coming !

SECOND SPIRIT

The deathless stars are bright above ; If I would cross the shade of night,

90 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Within my heart is the lamp of love,

And that is day !

And the moon will smile with gentle light On my golden plumes where'er they move ; The meteors will linger round my flight, And make night day.

FIRST SPIRIT

But if the whirlwinds of darkness waken Hail, and lightning, and stormy rain ; See, the bounds of the air are shaken —

Night is coming !

The red swift clouds of the hurricane Yon declining sun have overtaken,

The clash of the hail sweeps over the plain — Night is coming !

SECOND SPIRIT

I see the light, and I hear the sound ;

I'll sail on the flood of the tempest dark, With the calm within and the light around

Which makes night day : And thou, when the gloom is deep and stark, Look from thy dull earth, slumber-bound, My moon-light flight thou then mayst mark On high, far away.

Some say there is a precipice

Where one vast pine is frozen to ruin O'er piles of snow and chasms of ice 'Mid Alpine mountains ; And that the languid storm pursuing That winged shape, for ever flies

Round those hoar branches, aye renewing Its aery fountains.

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Some say when nights are dry and clear,

And the death-dews sleep on the morass, Sweet whispers are heard by the traveller,

Which make night day :

And a silver shape like his early love doth pass Upborne by her wild and glittering hair, And when he awakes on the fragrant grass, He finds night day.

ODE TO NAPLES

EPODE I a.

I STOOD within the city disinterred,

And heard the autumnal leaves like light footfalls Of spirits passing through the streets, and heard

The Mountain's slumberous voice at intervals

Thrill through those roofless halls ; The oracular thunder penetrating shook

The listening soul in my suspended blood ; I felt that Earth out of her deep heart spoke —

I felt, but heard not : — through white columns glowed

The isle-sustaining Ocean-flood, A plane of light between two Heavens of azure :

Around me gleamed many a bright sepulchre Of whose pure beauty, Time, as if his pleasure Were to spare Death, had never made erasure ;

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS 93

But every living lineament was clear

As in the sculptor's thought ; and there The wreaths of stony myrtle, ivy and pine,

Like winter leaves o'ergrown by moulded snow,

Seemed only not to move and grow Because the crystal silence of the air Weighed on their life ; even as the Power divine Which then lulled all things brooded upon mine.

EPODE II «

Then gentle winds arose With many a mingled close

Of wild Aeolian sound and mountain-odour keen ; And where the Baian ocean Welters with air-like motion Within, above, around its bowers of starry green, Moving the sea-flowers in those purple caves Even as the ever stormless atmosphere

Floats o'er the Elysian realm, It bore me like an Angel, o'er the waves

Of sunlight, whose swift pinnace of dewy air No storm can overwhelm ; I sailed, where ever flows Under the calm Serene A spirit of deep emotion From the unknown graves Of the dead kings of Melody. Shadowy Aornos darkened o'er the helm The horizontal aether ! heaven stripped bare Its depths over Elysium, where the prow Made the invisible water white as snow ; From that Typhaean mount, Inarime,

There streamed a sunlight vapour, like the standard Of some aetherial host ; Whilst from all the coast,

Louder and louder, gathering round, there wandered Over the oracular woods and divine sea

94 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

Prophesyings which grew articulate —

They seize me — I must speak them — be they fate !

STROPHE a i

Naples ! thou Heart of men which ever pantest

Naked, beneath the lidless eye of heaven ! Elysian City which to calm enchantest

The mutinous air and sea : they round thee, even

As sleep round Love, are driven ! Metropolis of a ruined Paradise

Long lost, late won, and yet but half regained ! Bright Altar of the bloodless sacrifice,

Which armed Victory offers up unstained

To Love, the flower-enchained ! Thou which wert once, and then didst cease to be, Now art, and henceforth ever shalt be, free,

If Hope, and Truth, and Justice can avail, Hail, hail, all hail !

STROPHE 0 2

Thou youngest giant birth

Which from the groaning earth Leap'st, clothed in armour of impenetrable scale !

Last of the Intercessors !

Who 'gainst the Crowned Transgressors Pleadest before God's love ! Arrayed in Wisdom's mail,

Wave thy lightning lance in mirth,

Nor let thy high heart fail, Though from their hundred gates the leagued Oppressors,

With hurried legends move !

Hail, hail, all hail !

ANTISTROPHE a What though Cimmerian Anarchs dare blaspheme

Freedom and thee ? thy shield is as a mirror To make their blind slaves see, and with fierce gleam To turn his hungry sword upon the wearer A new Actaeon's error

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Shall theirs have been — devoured by their own hounds !

Be thou like the imperial Basilisk Killing thy foe with unapparent wounds !

Gaze on oppression, till at that dread risk

Aghast she pass from the Earth's disk : Fear not, but gaze — for freemen mightier grow, And slaves more feeble, gazing on their foe ;

If Hope and Truth and Justice may avail,

Thou shalt be great.— All hail !

ANTISTROPHE & 2

From Freedom's form divine,

From Nature's inmost shrine, Strip every impious gawd, rend Error veil by veil :

O'er Ruin desolate,

O'er Falsehood's fallen state, Sit thou sublime, unawed ; be the Destroyer pale !

And equal laws be thine,

And winged words let sail, Freighted with truth even from the throne of God :

That wealth, surviving fate,

Be thine.— All hail.

ANTISTROPHE « y Didst thou not start to hear Spain's thrilling paean

From land to land re-echoed solemnly, Till silence became music ? From the Aeaean To the cold Alps, eternal Italy Starts to hear thine ! The Sea Which paves the desert streets of Venice laughs

In light and music ; widowed Genoa wan By moonlight spells ancestral epitaphs, Murmuring, where is Doria ? fair Milan,

Within whose veins long ran The viper's palsying venom, lifts her heel To bruise his head. The signal and the seal (If Hope and Truth and Justice can avail) Art Thou of all these hopes.— O hail !

96 MISCELLANEOUS POEMS

ANTISTROPHE 0 y

Florence ! beneath the sun,

Of cities fairest one, Blushes within her bower for Freedom's expectation :

From eyes of quenchless hope

Rome tears the priestly cope, As ruling once by power, so now by admiration,

As athlete stripped to run

From a remoter station

For the high prize lost on Philippi's shore : — As then Hope, Truth, and Justice did avail, So now may Fraud and Wrong ! O hail !

EPODE I /3

Hear ye the march as of the Earth-born Forms

Arrayed against the ever-living Gods ? The crash and darkness of a thousand storms Bursting their inaccessible abodes

Of crags and thunder-clouds ? See ye the banners blazoned to the day,

Inwrought with emblems of barbaric pride ? Dissonant threats kill Silence far away ;

The serene Heaven which wraps our Eden wide

With iron light is dyed ; The Anarchs of the North lead forth their legions

Like Chaos o'er creation, uncreating ; An hundred tribes nourished on strange religions And lawless slaveries, — down the aerial regions Of the white Alps, desolating, Famished wolves that bide no waiting, Blotting the glowing footsteps of old glory, Trampling our columned cities into dust,

Their dull and savage lust On Beauty's corse to sickness satiating — They come ! The fields they tread look black and hoary With fire — from their red feet the streams run gory !

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EPODE II #

Great Spirit, deepest Love ! Which rulest and dost move

All things which live and are, within the Italian shore ; Who spreadest heaven around it, Whose woods, rocks, waves, surround it, Who sittest in thy star, o'er Ocean's western floor ; Spirit of beauty ! at whose soft command

The sunbeams and the showers distil its foison

From the Earth's bosom chill ; O bid those beams be each a blinding brand

Of lightning ! bid those showers be dews of poison ! Bid the Earth's plenty kill ! Bid thy bright Heaven above, Whilst light and darkness bound it, Be their tomb who planned To make it ours and thine ! Or, with thine harmonizing ardours fill And raise thy sons, as o'er the prone horizon Thy lamp feeds every twilight wave with fire — Be man's high hope and unextinct desire The instrument to work thy will divine !

Then clouds from sunbeams, antelopes from leopards, And frowns and fears from Thee, Would not more swiftly flee

Than Celtic wolves from the Ausonian shepherds. — Whatever, Spirit, from thy starry shrine Thou yieldest or withholdest, Oh let be This city of thy worship ever free !

H

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LINES FROM "FIORDISPINA"

THE season was the childhood of sweet June, Whose sunny hours from morning until noon Went creeping through the day with silent feet, Each with its load of pleasure, slow yet sweet ; Like the long years of blessed Eternity Never to be developed. Joy to thee, Fiordispina and thy Cosimo, For thou the wonders of the depth canst know Of this unfathomable flood of hours, Sparkling beneath the heaven which embowers —

***** They were two cousins, almost like to twins, Except that from the catalogue of sins Nature had rased their love — which could not be But by dissevering their nativity. And so they grew together like two flowers Upon one stem, which the same beams and showers Lull or awaken in their purple prime, Which the same hand will gather — the same clime Shake with decay. This fair day smiles to see All those who love — and who e'er loved like thee, Fiordispina? Scarcely Cosimo, Within whose bosom and whose brain now glow The ardours of a vision which obscure The very idol of its portraiture. He faints, dissolved into a sea of love ; But thou art as a planet sphered above ; But thou art Love itself — ruling the motion Of his subjected spirit : such emotion Must end in sin and sorrow, if sweet May Had not brought forth this morn — your wedding-day.

TO JANE— THE INVITATION

BEST and brightest, come away ! Fairer far than this fair Day, Which, like thee to those in sorrow, Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow To the rough Year just awake In its cradle on the brake. The brightest hour of unborn Spring, Through the winter wandering, Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn To hoar February born ; Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth, It kissed the forehead of the Earth, And smiled upon the silent sea, And bade the frozen streams be free, And waked to music all their fountains, And breathed upon the frozen mountains, And like a prophetess of May Strewed flowers upon the barren way, Making the wintry world appear Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

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Away, away, from men and towns, To the wild wood and the downs — To the silent wilderness Where the soul need not repress Its music lest it should not find An echo in another's mind, While the touch of Nature's art Harmonizes heart to heart. I leave this notice on my door For each accustomed visitor : — " I am gone into the fields To take what this sweet hour yields ; — Reflexion, you may come to-morrow, Sit by the fireside with Sorrow. — You with the unpaid bill, Despair, — You tiresome verse-reciter, Care, — I will pay you in the grave, — Death will listen to your stave. Expectation too, be off ! To-day is for itself enough ; Hope, in pity mock not Woe With smiles, nor follow where I go ; Long having lived on thy sweet food, At length I find one moment's good After long pain — with all your love, This you never told me of."

Radiant Sister of the Day, Awake ! arise ! and come away ! To the wild woods and the plains, And the pools where winter rains Image all their roof of leaves, Where the pine its garland weaves Of sapless green and ivy dun Round stems that never kiss the sun ; Where the lawns and pastures be, And the sand-hills of the sea ; —

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Where the melting hoar-frost wets The daisy-star that never sets, And wind-flowers, and violets, Which yet join not scent to hue, Crown the pale year weak and new ; When the night is left behind In the deep east, dun and blind, And the blue noon is over us, And the multitudinous Billows murmur at our feet, Where the earth and ocean meet, And all things seem only one In the universal sun.

TO JANE— THE RECOLLECTION

I

Now the last day of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou,

The loveliest and the last, is dead, Rise, Memory, and write its praise ! Up to thy wonted work ! come, trace

The epitaph of glory fled, — For now the Earth has changed its face, A frown is on the Heaven's brow.

II We wandered to the pine forest

That skirts the Ocean's foam, The lightest wind was in its nest,

The tempest in its home. The whispering waves were half asleep

The clouds were gone to play, And on the bosom of the deep,

The smile of Heaven lay ; It seemed as if the hour were one

Sent from beyond the skies,

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Which scattered from above the sun A light of Paradise.

Ill We paused amid the pines that stood

The giants of the waste, Tortured by storms to shapes as rude

As serpents interlaced, And soothed by every azure breath,

That under heaven is blown, To harmonies and hues beneath,

As tender as its own ; Now all the tree-tops lay asleep,

Like green waves on the sea, As still as in the silent deep

The ocean woods may be.

IV

How calm it was ! — the silence there

By such a chain was bound That even the busy woodpecker

Made stiller by her sound The inviolable quietness ;

The breath of peace we drew With its soft motion made not less

The calm that round us grew. There seemed from the remotest seat

Of the white mountain waste, To the soft flower beneath our feet,

A magic circle traced, — A spirit interfused around,

A thrilling silent life, To momentary peace it bound

Our mortal nature's strife ; — And still I felt the centre of

The magic circle there Was one fair form that filled with love

The lifeless atmosphere.

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v We paused beside the pools that lie

Under the forest bough ; Each seemed as 'twere a little sky

Gulphed in a world below ; A firmament of purple light,

Which in the dark earth lay, More boundless than the depth of night,

And purer than the day — In which the lovely forests grew

As in the upper air, More perfect both in shape and hue

Than any spreading there. There lay the glade and neighbouring lawn,

And through the dark green wood The white sun twinkling like the dawn

Out of a speckled cloud. Sweet views which in our world above

Can never well be seen, Were imaged by the water's love

Of that fair forest green. And all was interfused beneath

With an elysian glow, An atmosphere without a breath,

A softer day below. Like one beloved the scene had lent

To the dark water's breast Its every leaf and lineament

With more than truth expressed ; Until an envious wind crept by,

Like an unwelcome thought, Which from the mind's too faithful eye

Blots one dear image out. Though thou art ever fair and kind,

The forests ever green, Less oft is peace in Shelley's mind,

Than calm in waters seen.

CHORU5LS

FROM .AS

CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS"

Chorus of Greek Captive Women. WE strew these opiate flowers

On thy restless pillow, — They were stripped from Orient bowers, By the Indian billow. Be thy sleep Calm and deep, Like theirs who fell — not ours who weep !

Indian. Away, unlovely dreams !

Away, false shapes of sleep ! Be his, as Heaven seems,

Clear, and bright, and deep ! Soft as love, and calm as death, Sweet as a summer night without a breath.

Chorus.

Sleep, sleep ! our song is laden With the soul of slumber ;

no CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS

It was sung by a Samian maiden, Whose lover was of the number Who now keep That calm sleep Whence none may wake, where none shall weep.

Indian. I touch thy temples pale !

I breathe my soul on thee ! And could my prayers avail,

All my joy should be Dead, and I would live to weep, So thou might'st win one hour of quiet sleep.

II

Life may change, but it may fly not ; Hope may vanish, but can die not ; Truth be veiled, but still it burneth ; Love repulsed, — but it returneth !

Yet were life a charnel where Hope lay coffined with Despair ; Yet were truth a sacred lie, Love were lust, if Liberty

Lent not life its soul of light, Hope its iris of delight, Truth its prophet's robe to wear, Love its power to give and bear.

Ill

In the great morning of the world, The spirit of God with might unfurled The flag of Freedom over Chaos, And all its banded anarchs fled,

CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS" in

Like vultures frighted from Imaus,

Before an earthquake's tread. — So from Time's tempestuous dawn Freedom's splendour burst and shone : — Thermopylae and Marathon Caught, like mountains beacon-lighted,

The springing Fire. — The winged glory On Philippi half-alighted,

Like an eagle on a promontory. Its unwearied wings could fan The quenchless ashes of Milan. From age to age, from man to man,

It lived ; and lit from land to land

Florence, Albion, Switzerland.

Then night fell ; and, as from night,

Re-assuming fiery flight,

From the West swift Freedom came,

Against the course of Heaven and doom, A second sun arrayed in flame,

To burn, to kindle, to illume. From far Atlantis its young beams Chased the shadows and the dreams. France, with all her sanguine steams,

Hid, but quenched it not ; again

Through clouds its shafts of glory rain

From utmost Germany to Spain.

As an eagle fed with morning

Scorns the embattled tempests' warning,

When she seeks her aerie hanging

In the mountain-cedar's hair, And her brood expect the clanging

Of her wings through the wild air, Sick with famine : — Freedom, so To what of Greece remaineth now Returns ; her hoary ruins glow

112 CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS"

Like orient mountains lost in day ;

Beneath the safety of her wings Her renovated nurslings prey,

And in the naked lightnings Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. Let Freedom leave — where'er she flies, A Desert, or a Paradise :

Let the beautiful and the brave

Share her glory, or a grave.

IV Worlds on worlds are rolling ever

From creation to decay, Like the bubbles on a river

Sparkling, bursting, borne away.

But they are still immortal

Who, through birth's orient portal And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro,

Clothe their unceasing flight

In the brief dust and light Gathered around their chariots as they go ;

New shapes they still may weave,

New gods, new laws receive, Bright or dim are they as the robes they last

On Death's bare ribs had cast.

A power from the unknown God, A Promethean conqueror came ;

Like a triumphal path he trod The thorns of death and shame. A mortal shape to him Was like the vapour dim Which the orient planet animates with light ; Hell, Sin, and Slavery came, Like blood-hounds mild and tame, Nor preyed, until their Lord had taken flight ;

CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS" 113

The moon of Mahomet Arose, and it shall set :

While blazoned as on heaven's immortal noon The cross leads generations on.

Swift as the radiant shapes of sleep

From one whose dreams are Paradise Fly, when the fond wretch wakes to weep,

And day peers forth with her blank eyes ;

So fleet, so faint, so fair,

The Powers of earth and air Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem :

Apollo, Pan, and Love,

And even Olympian Jove, Grew weak, for killing Truth had glared on them ;

Our hills and seas and streams

Dispeopled of their dreams, Their waters turned to blood, their dew to tears,

Wailed for the golden years.

V The world's great age begins anew,

The golden years return, The earth doth like a snake renew

Her winter weeds outworn : Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam, Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains

From waves serener far ; A new Peneus rolls his fountains

Against the morning-star. Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. I

ii4 CHORUSES FROM "HELLAS"

A loftier Argo cleaves the main, Fraught with a later prize ;

Another Orpheus sings again, And loves, and weeps, and dies.

A new Ulysses leaves once more

Calypso for his native shore.

O, write no more the tale of Troy, If earth Death's scroll must be !

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy Which dawns upon the free :

Although a subtler Sphinx renew

Riddles of death Thebes never knew.

Another Athens shall arise,

And to remoter time Bequeath, like sunset to the skies,

The splendour of its prime ; And leave, if naught so bright may live, All earth can take or Heaven can give.

Saturn and Love their long repose Shall burst, more bright and good

Than all who fell, than One who rose, Than many unsubdued :

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers,

But votive tears and symbol flowers.

O cease ! must hate and death return ?

Cease ! must men kill and die ? Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn

Of bitter prophecy. The world is weary of the past, O might it die or rest at last !

SHORTER LYRICS

ON FANNY GODWIN

HER voice did quiver as we parted,

Yet knew I not that heart was broken From which it came, and I departed Heeding not the words then spoken. Misery — O Misery, This world is all too wide for thee.

LINES

THAT time is dead for ever, child, Drowned, frozen, dead for ever !

We look on the past

And stare aghast

At the spectres wailing, pale and ghast, Of hopes which thou and I beguiled

To death on life's dark river.

120 SHORTER LYRICS

II

The stream we gazed on then rolled by ; Its waves are unreturning ;

But we yet stand

In a lone land,

Like tombs to mark the memory Of hopes and fears, which fade and flee In the light of life's dim morning.

. FRAGMENT ON HOME

DEAR home, thou scene of earliest hopes and joys, The least of which wronged Memory ever makes Bitterer than all thine unremembered tears.

SHORTER LYRICS 121

PASSAGE OF THE APENNINES

LISTEN, listen, Mary mine,

To the whisper of the Apennine ;

It bursts on the roof like the thunder's roar,

Or like the sea on a northern shore,

Heard in its raging ebb and flow

By the captives pent in the cave below.

The Apennine in the light of day

Is a mighty mountain dim and grey,

Which between the earth and sky doth lay ;

But when night comes, a chaos dread

On the dim starlight then is spread,

And the Apennine walks abroad with the storm.

THE PAST

I

WILT thou forget the happy hours Which we buried in Love's sweet bowers, Heaping over their corpses cold Blossoms and leaves instead of mould ? Blossoms which were the joys that fell, And leaves, the hopes that yet remain.

II

Forget the dead, the past ? O yet There are ghosts that may take revenge for it, Memories that make the heart a tomb, Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom, And with ghastly whispers tell That joy, once lost, is pain.

122

SHORTER LYRICS

TO MARY

0 MARY dear, that you were here With your brown eyes bright and clear, And your sweet voice, like a bird Singing love to its lone mate

In the ivy bower disconsolate ;

Voice the sweetest ever heard !

And your brow more . . .

Than the sky

Of this azure Italy.

Mary dear, come to me soon,

1 am not well whilst thou art far ; As sunset to the sphered moon, As twilight to the western star, Thou, beloved, art to me.

O Mary dear, that you were here ; The Castle echo whispers " Here ! "

THE INDIAN SERENADE

I ARISE from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright : I arise from dreams of thee, And a spirit in my feet Hath led me — who knows how ? To thy chamber window, Sweet !

II

The wandering airs they faint On the dark, the silent stream — And the Champak's odours fail Like sweet thoughts in a dream ; The nightingale's complaint, It dies upon her heart ; — As I must on thine, O ! beloved as thou art !

124 SHORTER LYRICS

in

0 lift me from the grass !

1 die ! I faint ! I fail ! Let thy love in kisses rain On my lips and eyelids pale. My cheek is cold and white, alas ! My heart beats loud and fast ; — Oh ! press it to thine own again, Where it will break at last.

TWO FRAGMENTS TO MARY

MY dearest Mary, wherefore hast thou gone, And left me in this dreary world alone ! Thy form is here indeed — a lovely one — But thou art fled, gone down the dreary road, That leads to Sorrow's most obscure abode ; Thou sittest on the hearth of pale despair,

Where For thine own sake I cannot follow thee.

II

The world is dreary,

And I am weary Of wandering on without thee, Mary ;

A joy was erewhile

In thy voice and thy smile, And 'tis gone, when I should be gone too, Mary.

SHORTER LYRICS 125

FRAGMENT: QUESTIONS

Is it that in some brighter sphere We part from friends we meet with here ? Or do we see the Future pass Over the Present's dusky glass ? Or what is that that makes us seem To patch up fragments of a dream, Part of which comes true, and part Beats and trembles in the heart ?

FRAGMENT: LOVE THE UNIVERSE

AND who feels discord now or sorrow ?

Love is the universe to-day — These are the slaves of dim to-morrow,

Darkening Life's labyrinthine way.

FRAGMENT : CALM THOUGHTS

YE gentle visitations of calm thought — Moods like the memories of happier earth, Which come arrayed in thoughts of little worth

Like stars in clouds by the weak winds enwrought, But that the clouds depart and stars remain,

While they remain, and ye, alas, depart !

126

SHORTER LYRICS

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

THE Fountains mingle with the River

And the Rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion ; Nothing in the world is single ;

All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle ; —

Why not I with thine ? —

II

See the mountains kiss high Heaven

And the waves clasp one another ; No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother ; And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea : What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

SHORTER LYRICS 127

TO

I

I FEAR thy kisses, gentle maiden,

Thou needest not fear mine ; My spirit is too deeply laden

Ever to burthen thine.

II I fear thy mien, thy tones, thy motion,

Thou needest not fear mine ; Innocent is the heart's devotion

With which I worship thine.

SONG

I RARELY, rarely, comest thou,

Spirit of Delight ! Wherefore hast thou left me now

Many a day and night ? Many a weary night and day Tis since thou art fled away.

II How shall ever one like me

Win thee back again ? With the joyous and the free

Thou wilt scoff at pain. Spirit false ! thou hast forgot All but those who need thee not.

ill

As a lizard with the shade Of a trembling leaf,

128 SHORTER LYRICS

Thou with sorrow art dismayed ;

Even the sighs of grief Reproach thee, that thou art not near, And reproach thou wilt not hear.

IV

Let me set my mournful ditty

To a merry measure, Thou wilt never come for pity,

Thou wilt come for pleasure. Pity then will cut away Those cruel wings, and thou wilt stay.

v I love all that thou lovest,

Spirit of Delight ! The fresh Earth in new leaves dressed,

And the starry night ; Autumn evening, and the morn When the golden mists are born.

VI

I love snow, and all the forms

Of the radiant frost ; I love waves, and winds, and storms,

Every thing almost Which is Nature's, and may be Untainted by man's misery.

VII

I love tranquil solitude,

And such society As is quiet, wise and good ;

Between thee and me What difference ? but thou dost possess The things I seek, not love them less.

SHORTER LYRICS

VIII I love Love — though he has wings,

And like light can flee, But above all other things,

Spirit, I love thee — Thou art love and life ! O come, Make once more my heart thy home.

129

K

WHILE GATHERING FLOWERS ON THE PLAIN OF ENNA

I

SACRED Goddess, Mother Earth, Thou from whose immortal bosom

Gods and men and beasts have birth, Leaf and blade and bud and blossom,

Breathe thine influence most divine

On thine own child, Proserpine.

II If with mists of evening dew

Thou dost nourish these young flowers Till they grow, in scent and hue,

Fairest children of the hours, Breathe thine influence most divine On thine own child, Proserpine.

SHORTER LYRICS 131

TO THE MOON

ART thou pale for weariness Of climbing heaven and gazing on the earth,

Wandering companionless Among the stars that have a different birth, — And ever changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy ?

THE WORLD'S WANDERERS

I

TELL me, thou star, whose wings of light Speed thee in thy fiery flight, In what cavern of the night

Will thy pinions close now ?

II

Tell me, moon, thou pale and grey Pilgrim of heaven's homeless way, In what depth of night or day Seekest thou repose now ?

in

Weary wind, who wanderest Like the world's rejected guest, Hast thou still some secret nest On the tree or billow ?

132 SHORTER LYRICS

TIME LONG PAST

I LIKE the ghost of a dear friend dead

Is Time long past. A tone which is now forever fled, A hope which is now forever past, A love so sweet it could not last,

Was Time long past.

II There were sweet dreams in the night

Of Time long past: And, was it sadness or delight, Each day a shadow onward cast Which made us wish it yet might last- That Time long past.

Ill There is regret, almost remorse,

For Time long past. 'Tis like a child's beloved corse A father watches, till at last Beauty is like remembrance, cast

From Time long past.

TO NIGHT

I SWIFTLY walk over the western wave,

Spirit of Night ! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where all the long and lone daylight, Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear, —

Swift be thy flight !

SHORTER LYRICS 133

ii Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,

Star-inwrought !

Blind with thine hair the eyes of Day; Kiss her until she be wearied out, Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land, Touching all with thine opiate wand —

Come, long sought !

in

When I arose and saw the dawn,

I sighed for thee ;

When light rode high, and the dew was gone And noon lay heavy on flower and tree, And the weary Day turned to his rest, Lingering like an unloved guest,

I sighed for thee.

IV

Thy brother Death came, and cried,

Wouldst thou me ?

Thy sweet child Sleep, the filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noon-tide bee, Shall I nestle near thy side ? Wouldst thou me ? — And I replied,

No, not thee !

V Death will come when thou art dead,

Soon, too soon —

Sleep will come when thou art fled ; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night — Swift be thine approaching flight,

Come soon, soon !

FROM THE ARABIC: AN IMITATION

I MY faint spirit was sitting in the light

Of thy looks, my love ; It panted for thee like the hind at noon

For the brooks, my love. Thy barb whose hoofs outspeed the tempest's flight

Bore thee far from me ;

My heart, for my weak feet were weary soon, Did companion thee.

II Ah ! fleeter far than fleetest storm or steed,

Or the death they bear, The heart which tender thought clothes like a dove

With the wings of care ; In the battle, in the darkness, in the need,

Shall mine cling to thee, Nor claim one smile for all the comfort, love, It may bring to thee.

TO EMILIA VIVIANI

MADONNA, wherefore hast thou sent to me

Sweet basil and mignonette, Embleming love and health, which never yet In the same wreath might be ?

Alas, and they are wet ! Is it with thy kisses or thy tears ?

For never rain or dew

Such fragrance drew From plant or flower — the very doubt endears

My sadness ever new, The sighs I breathe, the tears I shed for thee.

Send the stars light, but send not love to me,

In whom love ever made Health like a heap of embers soon to fade.

136 SHORTER LYRICS

TIME

UNFATHOMABLE Sea ! whose waves are years,

Ocean of Time, whose waters of deep woe Are brackish with the salt of human tears !

Thou shoreless flood, which in thy ebb and flow Claspest the limits of mortality !

And sick of prey, yet howling on for more, Vomitest thy wrecks on its inhospitable shore ;

Treacherous in calm, and terrible in storm, Who shall put forth on thee, Unfathomable Sea ?

TO

MUSIC, when soft voices die Vibrates in the memory ; Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken ; Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on.

MUTABILITY

I THE flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies ; All that we wish to stay

Tempts and then flies. What is this world's delight ? Lightning that mocks the night, Brief even as bright.

SHORTER LYRICS

II Virtue, how frail it is !

Friendship how rare ! Love, how it sells poor bliss For proud despair ! But we, though soon they fall, Survive their joy, and all Which ours we call.

137

III

Whilst skies are blue and bright, Whilst flowers are gay, Whilst eyes that change ere night

Make glad the day ; Whilst yet the calm hours creep, Dream thou — and from thy sleep Then wake to weep.

138 SHORTER LYRICS

THE AZIOLA

I

" Do you not hear the Aziola cry ? Methinks she must be nigh,"

Said Mary, as we sate In dusk, ere stars were lit, or candles brought ;

And I, who thought This Aziola was some tedious woman,

Asked, " Who is Aziola ?" How elate

I felt to know that it was nothing human,

No mockery of myself to fear or hate :

And Mary saw my soul,

And laughed, and said, " Disquiet yourself not ; 'Tis nothing but a little downy owl."

II Sad Aziola ! many an eventide

Thy music I had heard By wood and stream, meadow and mountain-side,

And fields and marshes wide, Such as nor voice, nor lute, nor wind, nor bird,

The soul ever stirred ; Unlike and far sweeter than them all. Sad Aziola ! from that moment I

Loved thee and thy sad cry.

TO-MORROW

I WHERE art thou, beloved To-morrow ?

When young and old and strong and weak, Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow,

Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, — In thy place — ah ! well-a-day ! We find the thing we fled — To-day.

SHORTER LYRICS 139

II If I walk in Autumn's even

While the dead leaves pass, If I look on Spring's soft heaven, —

Something is not there which was. Winter's wondrous frost and snow, Summer's clouds, where are they now ?

TO

I ONE word is too often profaned

For me to profane it, One feeling too falsely disdained

For thee to disdain it. One hope is too like despair

For prudence to smother, And pity from thee more dear

Than that from another.

II I can give not what men call love,

But wilt thou accept not The worship the heart lifts above

And the Heavens reject not, — The desire of the moth for the star,

Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow ?

140

SHORTER LYRICS

TO

WHEN passion's trance is overpast, If tenderness and truth could last Or live, whilst all wild feelings keep Some mortal slumber, dark and deep, I should not weep, I should not weep !

II

It were enough to feel, to see Thy soft eyes gazing tenderly, And dream the rest — and burn and be The secret food of fires unseen, Couldst thou but be as thou hast been.

Ill

After the slumber of the year The woodland violets re-appear, All things revive in field or grove And sky and sea, but two, which move And form all others, life and love.

SHORTER LYRICS 141

A BRIDAL SONG

I

THE golden gates of Sleep unbar

Where Strength and Beauty met together,

Kindle their image like a star In a sea of glassy weather.

Night, with all thy stars look down, — Darkness, weep thy holiest dew, —

Never smiled the inconstant moon On a pair so true.

Let eyes not see their own delight ; —

Haste, swift Hour, and thy flight Oft renew.

II Fairies, sprites, and angels keep her !

Holy stars, permit no wrong ! And return to wake the sleeper, Dawn, — ere it be long ! Oh joy ! oh fear ! what will be done In the absence of the sun ! Come along !

LINES

I

WHEN the lamp is shattered The light in the dust lies dead —

When the cloud is scattered The rainbow's glory is shed.

When the lute is broken, Sweet tones are remembered not

When the lips have spoken, Loved accents are soon forgot.

142 SHORTER LYRICS

II

As music and splendour Survive not the lamp and the lute,

The heart's echoes render No song when the spirit is mute, —

No song but sad dirges, Like the wind through a ruined cell,

Or the mournful surges That ring the dead seaman's knell.

Ill

When hearts have once mingled Love first leaves the well-built nest, —

The weak one is singled To e'ndure what it once possessed.

O, Love ! who bewailest The frailty of all things here,

Why choose you the frailest For your cradle, your home and your bier ?

IV

Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the ravens on high :

Bright reason will mock thee, Like the sun from a wintry sky.

From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home

Leave thee naked to laughter, When leaves fall and cold winds come.

SHORTER LYRICS 143

TO JANE

I

THE keen stars were twinkling, And the fair moon was rising among them,

Dear Jane !

The guitar was tinkling,

But the notes were not sweet till you sung them Again.

II

As the moon's soft splendour O'er the faint cold starlight of heaven

Is thrown,

So your voice most tender To the strings without soul had then given Its own.

Ill

The stars will awaken, Though the moon sleep a full hour later,

To-night ;

No leaf will be shaken Whilst the dews of your melody scatter Delight.

IV

Though the sound overpowers, Sing again, with your dear voice revealing

A tone

Of some world far from ours, Where music and moonlight and feeling Are one.

144

SHORTER LYRICS

SONG

A WIDOW bird sate mourning for her love

Upon a wintry bough ; The frozen wind crept on above,

The freezing stream below.

There was no leaf upon the forest bare,

No flower upon the ground, And little motion in the air

Except the mill-wheel's sound.

DIRGES

LAMENTS

DIRGES AND LAMENTS

THE DIRGE OF BEATRICE

FALSE friend, wilt thou smile or weep When my life is laid asleep ? Little cares for a smile or a tear The clay-cold corpse upon the bier !

Farewell ! Heigho !

What is this whispers low ? There is a snake in thy smile, my dear ; And bitter poison within thy tear.

Sweet sleep, were death like to thee, Or if thou couldst mortal be, I would close these eyes of pain ; When to wake ? Never again.

O, World ! Farewell !

Listen to the passing bell ! It says, thou and I must part, With a light and a heavy heart.

ISO

DIRGES AND LAMENTS

AUTUMN

A DIRGE

THE warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing, The bare boughs are sighing, the pale flowers are dying,

And the year

On the earth her death-bed, in a shroud of leaves dead, Is lying.

Come, months, come away,

From November to May,

In your saddest array ;

Follow the bier

Of the dead cold year, And like dim shadows watch by her sepulchre.

II

The chill rain is falling, the nipped worm is crawling, The rivers are swelling, the thunder is knelling

For the year ; The blithe swallows are flown, and the lizards each gone

To his dwelling ; Come, months, come away ; Put on white, black, and grey ; Let your light sisters play — Ye, follow the bier Of the dead cold year, And make her grave green with tear on tear.

DIRGES AND LAMENTS 151

DIRGE FOR THE YEAR

I

ORPHAN hours, the year is dead, — Come anoj sigh, come and weep !

Merry hours, smile instead, For the year is but asleep.

See, it smiles as it is sleeping,

Mocking your untimely weeping.

II As an earthquake rocks a corse

In its coffin in the clay, So White Winter, that rough nurse,

Rocks the death-cold year to-day ; Solemn hours ! wail aloud For your mother in her shroud.

Ill

As the wild air stirs and sways The tree-swung cradle of a child,

So the breath of these rude days Rocks the year : — be calm and mild,

Trembling hours, — she will arise

With new love within her eyes.

IV January grey is here,

Like a sexton by her grave ; February bears the bier,

March with grief doth howl and rave And April weeps — but O, ye hours, Follow with May's fairest flowers.

A LAMENT

OH, world ! oh, life ! oh, time ! On whose last steps I climb

Trembling at that where I had stood before ; When will return the glory of your prime ? No more — O, never more !

II

Out of the day and night A joy has taken flight ;

Fresh spring, and summer, and winter hoar, Move my faint heart with grief, but with delight No more — O, never more !

DIRGES AND LAMENTS 153

REMEMBRANCE

I

SWIFTER far than summer's flight- Swifter far than youth's delight — Swifter far than happy night,

Art thou come and gone — As the wood when leaves are shed, As the night when sleep is fled, As the heart when joy is dead,

I am left lone, alone.

II

The swallow summer comes again — The owlet night resumes his reign — But the wild-swan youth is fain

To fly with thee, false as thou. My heart each day desires the morrow ; Sleep itself is turned to sorrow ; Vainly would my winter borrow

Sunny leaves from any bough.

Ill

Lilies for a bridal bed — Roses for a matron's head — Violets for a maiden dead —

Pansies let my flowers be : On the living grave I bear Scatter them without a tear — Let no friend, however dear,

Waste one hope, one fear for me.

154

DIRGES AND LAMENTS

A DIRGE

ROUGH wind, that meanest loud

Grief too sad for song ; Wild wind, when sullen cloud

Knells all the night long ; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches stain, Deep caves and dreary main,

Wail, for the world's wrong !

EPIPSYCHIDION

" L'anima amante si slancia fuori del create, e si crea nel infinite un Mondo tutto per essa, diverse assai da questo oscuro e pauroso baratro."

Her own words.

My Song, I fear that thou wilt find but few Who fitly shall conceive thy reasoning, Of such hard matter dost thou entertain ; Whence, if by misadventure, chance should bring Thee to base company, (as chance may do,) Quite unaware of what thou dost contain, I prithee, comfort thy sweet self again, My last delight! tell them that they are dull, And bid them own that thou art beautiful.

EPIPSYCHIDION

VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE NOBLE AND UNFOR- TUNATE LADY, EMILIA VIVIANI, NOW IMPRISONED IN THE CONVENT OF ST. ANNE'S, PISA

SWEET Spirit ! Sister of that orphan one, Whose empire is the name thou weepest on In my heart's temple I suspend to thee These votive wreaths of withered memory.

Poor captive bird ! who, from thy narrow cage, Pourest such music, that it might assuage The rugged hearts of those who prisoned thee, Were they not deaf to all sweet melody ; This song shall be thy rose : its petals pale Are dead, indeed, my adored Nightingale ! But soft and fragrant is the faded blossom, And it has no thorn left to wound thy bosom.

High, spirit-winged Heart ! who dost for ever Beat thine unfeeling bars with vain endeavour, Till those bright plumes of thought, in which arrayed It over-soared this low and worldly shade,

i6o EPIPSYCHIDION

Lie shattered ; and thy panting, wounded breast Stains with dear blood its unmaternal nest ! I weep vain tears : blood would less bitter be, Yet poured forth gladlier, could it profit thee.

Seraph of Heaven ! too gentle to be human, Veiling beneath that radiant form of Woman All that is insupportable in thee Of light, and love, and immortality ! Sweet Benediction in the eternal Curse ! Veiled Glory of this lampless Universe ! Thou Moon beyond the clouds ! Thou living Form Among the Dead ! Thou Star above the Storm ! Thou Wonder, and thou Beauty, and thou Terror ! Thou Harmony of Nature's art ! Thou Mirror In whom, as in the splendour of the Sun, All shapes look glorious which thou gazest on ! Aye, even the dim words which obscure thee now Flash, lightning-like, with unaccustomed glow ; I pray thee that thou blot from this sad song All of its much mortality and wrong, With those clear drops, which start like sacred dew From the twin lights thy sweet soul darkens through, Weeping, till sorrow becomes ecstasy : Then smile on it, so that it may not die.

I never thought before my death to see Youth's vision thus made perfect. Emily, I love thee ; though the world by no thin name Will hide that love from its unvalued shame. Would we two had been twins of the same mother ! Or, that the name my heart lent to another Could be a sister's bond for her and thee, beams of one f^rm't

one lawful and the other true, These names, though dear, could paint not, as is due, How beyond refuge I am thine. Ah me ! I am not thine : I am part of thee.

EPIPSYCHIDION 161

Sweet Lamp! my moth-like Muse has burnt its wings ; Or, like a dying swan who soars and sings, Young Love should teach Time, in his own grey style, All that thou art. Art thou not void of guile, A lovely soul formed to be bless'd and bless ? A well of sealed and secret happiness, Whose waters like blithe light and music are, Vanquishing dissonance and gloom ? A Star Which moves not in the moving Heavens, alone ? A smile amid dark frowns ? a gentle tone Amid rude voices ? a beloved light ? A Solitude, a Refuge, a Delight ? A Lute, which those whom love has taught to play Make music on, to soothe the roughest day And lull fond grief asleep ? a buried treasure ? A cradle of young thoughts of wingless pleasure ? A violet-shrouded grave of Woe ? — I measure The world of fancies, seeking one like thee, And find — alas ! mine own infirmity.

She met me, Stranger, upon life's rough way, And lured me towards sweet Death ; as Night by Day, Winter by Spring, or Sorrow by swift Hope, Led into light, life, peace. An antelope, In the suspended impulse of its lightness, Were less aetherially light : the brightness Of her divinest presence trembles through Her limbs, as underneath a cloud of dew Embodied in the windless Heaven of June Amid the splendour-winged stars, the Moon Burns, inextinguishably beautiful : And from her lips, as from a hyacinth full Of honey-dew, a liquid murmur drops, Killing the sense with passion ; sweet as stops Of planetary music heard in trance. In her mild lights the starry spirits dance, The sun-beams of those wells which ever leap

M

i62 EPIPSYCHIDION

Under the lightnings of the soul — too deep

For the brief fathom-line of thought or sense.

The glory of her being, issuing thence,

Stains the dead, blank, cold air with a warm shade

Of unentangled intermixture, made

By Love, of light and motion : one intense

Diffusion, one serene Omnipresence,

Whose flowing outlines mingle in their flowing

Around her cheeks and utmost fingers glowing

With the unintermitted blood, which there

¥uivers, (as in a fleece of snow-like air he crimson pulse of living morning quiver,) Continuously prolonged, and ending never, Till they are lost, and in that Beauty furled Which penetrates and clasps and fills the world ; Scarce visible from extreme loveliness. Warm fragrance seems to fall from her light dress And her loose hair ; and where some heavy tress The air of her own speed has disentwined, The sweetness seems to satiate the faint wind ; And in the soul a wild odour is felt, Beyond the sense, like fiery dews that melt

Into the bosom of a frozen bud.

See where she stands ! a mortal shape indued With love and life and light and deity, And motion which may change but cannot die ; An image of some bright Eternity ; A shadow of some golden dream ; a Splendour Leaving the third sphere pilotless ; a tender Reflexion of the eternal Moon of Love Under whose motions life's dull billows move ; A Metaphor of Spring and Youth and Morning ; A Vision like incarnate April, warning, With smiles and tears, Frost the Anatomy Into his summer grave.

Ah, woe is me !

EPIPSYCHIDION 163

What have I dared ? where am I lifted ? how Shall I descend, and perish not ? I know That Love makes all things equal : I have heard By mine own heart this joyous truth averred : The spirit of the worm beneath the sod In love and worship blends itself with God.

Spouse! Sister! Angel! Pilot of the Fate Whose course has been so starless ! O too late Beloved ! O too soon adored, by me ! For in the fields of immortality My spirit should at first have worshipped thine, A divine presence in a place divine ; Or should have moved beside it on this earth, A shadow of that substance, from its birth ; But not as now : — I love thee ; yes, I feel That on the fountain of my heart a seal Is set, to keep its waters pure and bright For thee, since in those tears thou hast delight. We — are we not formed, as notes of music are, For one another, though dissimilar ; Such difference without discord, as can make Those sweetest sounds, in which all spirits shake As trembling leaves in a continuous air ?

Thy wisdom speaks in me, and bids me dare Beacon the rocks on which high hearts are wrecked. I never was attached to that great sect, Whose doctrine is, that each one should select Out of the crowd a mistress or a friend, And all the rest, though fair and wise, commend To cold oblivion, though it is in the code Of modern morals, and the beaten road Which those poor slaves with weary footsteps tread, Who travel to their home among the dead By the broad highway of the world, and so With one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe, The dreariest and the longest journey go.

1 64

EPIPSYCHIDION

True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths ; 'tis like thy light, Imagination ! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Narrow The heart that loves, the brain that contemplates, The life that wears, the spirit that creates One object, and one form, and builds thereby A sepulchre for its eternity.

Mind from its object differs most in this : Evil from good ; misery from happiness ; The baser from the nobler ; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away ; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole ; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared : This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope ; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth.

There was a Being whom my spirit oft Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, Amid the enchanted mountains, and the caves

EPIPSYCHIDION 165

Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves

Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor

Paved her light steps ; — on an imagined shore,

Under the grey beak of some promontory

She met me, robed in such exceeding glory,

That I beheld her not. In solitudes

Her voice came to me through the whispering woods,

And from the fountains, and the odours deep

Of flowers, which, like lips murmuring in their sleep

Of the sweet kisses which had lulled them there,

Breathed but of her to the enamoured air ;

And from the breezes whether low or loud,

And from the rain of every passing cloud,

And from the singing of the summer-birds,

And from all sounds, all silence. In the words

Of antique verse and high romance, — in form,

Sound, colour — in whatever checks that Storm

Which with the shattered present chokes the past ;

And in that best philosophy, whose taste

Makes this cold common hell, our life, a doom

As glorious as a fiery martyrdom ;

Her Spirit was the harmony of truth. —

Then, from the caverns of my dreamy youth I sprang, as one sandalled with plumes of fire, And towards the loadstar of my one desire, I flitted, like a dizzy moth, whose flight Is as a dead leaf's in the owlet light, When it would seek in Hesper's setting sphere A radiant death, a fiery sepulchre, As if it were a lamp of earthly flame. — But She, whom prayers or tears then could not tame, Passed, like a God throned on a winged planet, Whose burning plumes to tenfold swiftness fan it, Into the dreary cone of our life's shade ; And as a man with mighty loss dismayed, I would have followed, though the grave between

1 66 EPIPSYCHIDION

Yawned like a gulph whose spectres are unseen :

When a voice said : — " O Thou of hearts the weakest,

" The phantom is beside thee whom thou seekest."

Then I — " where ? " the world's echo answered " where !

And in that silence, and in my despair,

I questioned every tongueless wind that flew

Over my tower of mourning, if it knew

Whither 'twas fled, this soul out of my soul ;

And murmured names and spells which have control

Over the sightless tyrants of our fate ;

But neither prayer nor verse could dissipate

The night which closed on her ; nor uncreate

That world within this Chaos, mine and me,

Of which she was the veiled Divinity,

The world I say of thoughts that worshipped her :

And therefore I went forth, with hope and fear

And every gentle passion sick to death,

Feeding my course with expectation's breath,

Into the wintry forest of our life ;

And struggling through its error with vain strife,

And stumbling in my weakness and my haste,

And half bewildered by new forms, I passed

Seeking among those untaught foresters

If I could find one form resembling hers,

In which she might have masked herself from me.

There, — One, whose voice was venomed melody,

Sate by a well, under blue night-shade bowers ;

The breath of her false mouth was like faint flowers,.

Her touch was as electric poison, — flame

Out of her looks into my vitals came,

And from her living cheeks and bosom flew

A killing air, which pierced like honey-dew

Into the core of my green heart, and lay

Upon its leaves ; until, as hair grown grey

O'er a young brow, they hid its unblown prime

With ruins of unseasonable time.

EPIPSYCHIDION 167

In many mortal forms I rashly sought The shadow of that idol of my thought. And some were fair — but beauty dies away : Others were wise — but honeyed words betray : And One was true — oh ! why not true to me ? Then, as a hunted deer that could not flee, I turned upon my thoughts, and stood at bay, Wounded and weak and panting ; the cold day Trembled, for pity of my strife and pain. When, like a noon-day dawn, there shone again Deliverance. One stood on my path who seemed As like the glorious shape which I had dreamed, As is the Moon, whose changes ever run Into themselves, to the eternal Sun ; The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven's bright

isles,

Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles, That wandering shrine of soft yet icy flame Which ever is transformed, yet still the same, And warms not but illumines. Young and fair As trie descended bpint oi that sphere, She hid me, as the Moon may hide the night From its own darkness, until all was bright Between the Heaven and Earth of my calm mind, And, as a cloud charioted by the wind, She led me to a cave in that wild place, And sate beside me, with her downward face Illumining my slumbers, like the Moon Waxing and waning o'er Endymion. And I was laid asleep, spirit and limb, And all my being became bright or dim As the Moon's image in a summer sea, According as she smiled or frowned on me ; And there I lay, within a chaste cold bed : Alas, I then was nor alive nor dead : — For at her silver voice came Death and Life, Unmindful each of their accustomed strife,

1 68 EPIPSYCHIDION

Masked like twin babes, a sister and a brother, The wandering hopes of one abandoned mother, And through the cavern without wings they flew, And cried " Away, he is not of our crew." I wept, and though it be a dream, I weep.

What storms then shook the ocean of my sleep, Blotting that Moon, whose pale and waning lips Then shrank as in the sickness of eclipse ; — And how my soul was as a lampless sea, And who was then its Tempest ; and when She, The Planet of that hour, was quenched, what frost Crept o'er those waters, till from coast to coast The moving billows of my being fell Into a death of ice, immovable ; — And then — what earthquakes made it gape and split, The white Moon smiling all the while on it, These words conceal : — If not, each word would be The key of staunchless tears. Weep not for me !

At length, into the obscure Forest came The Vision I had sought through grief and shame. Athwart that wintry wilderness of thorns Flashed from her motion splendour like the Morn's, And from her presence life was radiated Through the grey earth and branches bare and dead ; So that her way was paved, and roofed above With flowers as soft as thoughts of budding love ; And music from her respiration spread Like light, — all other sounds were penetrated By the small, still, sweet spirit of that sound, So that the savage winds hung mute around ; And odours warm and fresh fell from her hair Dissolving the dull cold in the frore air : Soft as an Incarnation of the Sun, When light is changed to love, this glorious One Floated into the cavern where I lay,

EPIPSYCHIDION 169

And called my Spirit, and the dreaming clay Was lifted by the thing that dreamed below As smoke by fire, and in her beauty's glow I stood, and felt the dawn of my long night Was penetrating me with living light : I knew it was the Vision veiled from me So many years — that it was Emily.

Twin Spheres of light who rule this passive Earth, This world of love, this me ; and into birth Awaken all its fruits and flowers, and dart Magnetic might into its central heart ; And lift its billows and its mists, and guide By everlasting laws each wind and tide To its fit cloud, and its appointed cave ; And lull its storms, each in the craggy grave Which was its cradle, luring to faint bowers The armies of the rainbow-winged showers ; And, as those married lights, which from the towers Of Heaven look forth and fold the wandering globe In liquid sleep and splendour, as a robe ; And all their many-mingled influence blend, If equal, yet unlike, to one sweet end ; — So ye, bright regents, with alternate sway Govern my sphere of being, night and day ! Thou, not disdaining even a borrowed might ; Thou, not eclipsing a remoter light ; And, through the shadow of the seasons three, From Spring to Autumn's sere maturity, Light it into the Winter of the tomb, Where it may ripen to a brighter bloom. Thou too, O Comet beautiful and fierce, Who drew the heart of this frail Universe Towards thine own ; till, wrecked in that convulsion Alternating attraction and repulsion, Thine went astray and that was rent in twain ; Oh, float into our azure heaven again !

EPIPSYCHIDION

Be there love's folding-star at thy return ; The living Sun will feed thee from its urn Of golden fire ; the Moon will veil her horn In thy last smiles ; adoring Even and Morn Will worship thee with incense of calm breath And lights and shadows ; as the star of Death And Birth is worshipped by those sisters wild Called Hope and Fear — upon the heart are piled Their offerings, — of this sacrifice divine A World shall be the altar.

Lady mine,

Scorn not these flowers of thought, the fading birth Which from its heart of hearts that plant puts forth Whose fruit, made perfect by thy sunny eyes, Will be as of the trees of Paradise.

The day is come, and thou wilt fly with me. To whatsoe'er of dull mortality Is mine, remain a vestal sister still ; To the intense, the deep, the imperishable, Not mine but me, henceforth be thou united Even as a bride, delighting and delighted. The hour is come : — the destined Star has risen Which shall descend upon a vacant prison.

EPIPSYCHIDION 171

The walls are high, the gates are strong, thick set

The sentinels — but true love never yet

Was thus constrained : it overleaps all fence :

Like lightning, with invisible violence

Piercing its continents ; like Heaven's free breath,

Which he who grasps can hold not ; liker Death,

Who rides upon a thought, and makes his way

Through temple, tower, and palace, and the array

Of arms : more strength has Love than he or they ;

For it can burst its charnel, and make free

The limbs in chains, the heart in agony,

The soul in dust and chaos.

Emily,

A ship is floating in the harbour now, A wind is hovering o'er the mountain's brow ; There is a path on the sea's azure floor, No keel has ever ploughed that path before ; The halcyons brood around the foamless isles ; The treacherous Ocean has forsworn its wiles ; The merry mariners are bold and free : Say, my heart's sister, wilt thou sail with me ? Our bark is as an albatross, whose nest Is a far Eden of the purple East ; And we between her wings will sit, while Night And Day, and Storm, and Calm, pursue their flight, Our ministers, along the boundless Sea, Treading each other's heels, unheededly. It is an isle under Ionian skies, Beautiful as a wreck of Paradise ; And, for the harbours are not safe and good, This land would have remained a solitude But for some pastoral people native there, Who from the Elysian, clear, and golden air Draw the last spirit of the age of gold, — Simple and spirited, innocent and bold. The blue Aegean girds this chosen home, With ever-changing sound and light and foam,

172 EPIPSYCHIDION

Kissing the sifted sands and caverns hoar ;

And all the winds wandering along the shore

Undulate with the undulating tide :

There are thick woods where sylvan forms abide ;

And many a fountain, rivulet, and pond,

As clear as elemental diamond,

Or serene morning air ; and far beyond,

The mossy tracks made by the goats and deer

(Which the rough shepherd treads but once a year,)

Pierce into glades, caverns, and bowers, and halls

Built round with ivy, which the waterfalls

Illumining, with sound that never fails

Accompany the noon-day nightingales ;

And all the place is peopled with sweet airs ;

The light clear element which the isle wears

Is heavy with the scent of lemon-flowers,

Which floats like mist laden with unseen showers

And falls upon the eyelids like faint sleep ;

And from the moss violets and jonquils peep,

And dart their arrowy odour through the brain

Till you might faint with that delicious pain.

And every motion, odour, beam, and tone,

With that deep music is in unison :

Which is a soul within the soul — they seem

Like echoes of an antenatal dream. —

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea,

Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity ;

Bright as that wandering Eden Lucifer,

Washed by the soft blue Oceans of young air.

It is a favoured place. Famine or Blight,

Pestilence, War and Earthquake, never light

Upon its mountain-peaks ; blind vultures, they

Sail onward far upon their fatal way :

The winged storms, chaunting their thunder-psalm

To other lands, leave azure chasms of calm

Over this isle, or weep themselves in dew,

From which its fields and woods ever renew

EPIPSYCHIDION 173

Their green and golden immortality.

And from the sea there rise, and from the sky

There fall, clear exhalations, soft and bright,

Veil after veil, each hiding some delight,

Which Sun or Moon or zephyr draw aside,

Till the isle's beauty, like a naked bride

Glowing at once with love and loveliness,

Blushes and trembles at its own excess :

Yet, like a buried lamp, a Soul no less

Burns in the heart of this delicious isle,

An atom of th' Eternal, whose own smile

Unfolds itself, and may be felt, not seen,

O'er the grey rocks, blue waves, and forests green,

Filling their bare and void interstices. —

But the chief marvel of the wilderness

Is a lone dwelling, built by whom or how

None of the rustic island-people know :

'Tis not a tower of strength, though with its height

It overtops the woods ; but, for delight,

Some wise and tender Ocean-King, ere crime

Had been invented, in the world's young prime,

Reared it, a wonder of that simple time,

An envy of the isles, a pleasure-house

Made sacred to his sister and his spouse.

It scarce seems now a wreck of human art,

But, as it were Titanic ; in the heart

Of Earth having assumed its form, then grown

Out of the mountains, from the living stone,

Lifting itself in caverns light and high :

For all the antique and learned imagery

Has been erased, and in the place of it

The ivy and the wild-vine interknit

The volumes of their many-twining stems ;

Parasite flowers illume with dewy gems

The lampless halls, and when they fade, the sky

Peeps through their winter-woof of tracery

With Moon-light patches, or star atoms keen,

174 EPIPSYCHIDION

Or fragments of the day's intense serene ; —

Working mosaic on their Parian floors.

And, day and night, aloof, from the high towers

And terraces, the Earth and Ocean seem

To sleep in one another's arms, and dream

Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, rocks, and all that we

Read in their smiles, and call reality.

This isle and house are mine, and I have vowed Thee to be lady of the solitude. — And I have fitted up some chambers there Looking towards the golden Eastern air, And level with the living winds, which flow Like waves above the living waves below. — I have sent books and music there, and all Those instruments with which high spirits call The future from its cradle, and the past Out of its grave, and make the present last In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, Folded within their own eternity. Our simple life wants little, and true taste Hires not the pale drudge Luxury, to waste The scene it would adorn, and therefore, still, Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. The ring-dove, in the embowering ivy, yet Keeps up her love-lament, and the owls flit Round the evening tower, and the young stars glance Between the quick bats in their twilight dance ; The spotted deer bask in the fresh moon-light Before our gate, and the slow, silent night Is measured by the pants of their calm sleep. Be this our home in life, and when years heap Their withered hours, like leaves, on our decay, Let us become the over-hanging day, The living soul of this Elysian isle, Conscious, inseparable, one. Meanwhile We two will rise, and sit, and walk together,

EPIPSYCHIDION 175

Under the roof of blue Ionian weather,

And wander in the meadows, or ascend

The mossy mountains, where the blue heavens bend

With lightest winds, to touch their paramour ;

Or linger, where the pebble-paven shore,

Under the quick, faint kisses of the sea

Trembles and sparkles as with ecstasy, —

Possessing and possessed by all that is

Within that calm circumference of bliss,

And by each other, till to love and live

Be one : — or, at the noontide hour, arrive

Where some old cavern hoar seems yet to keep

The moonlight of the expired night asleep,

Through which the awakened day can never peep ;

A veil for our seclusion, close as Night's,

Where secure sleep may kill thine innocent lights ;

Sleep, the fresh dew of languid love, the rain

Whose drops quench kisses till they burn again.

And we will talk, until thought's melody

Become too sweet for utterance, and it die

In words, to live again in looks, which dart

With thrilling tone into the voiceless heart,

Harmonizing silence without a sound.

Our breath shall intermix, our bosoms bound,

And our veins beat together ; and our lips,

With other eloquence than words, eclipse

The soul that burns between them ; and the wells

Which boil under our being's inmost cells,

The fountains of our deepest life, shall be

Confused in passion's golden purity,

As mountain-springs under the morning Sun.

We shall become the same, we shall be one

Spirit within two frames, oh ! wherefore two ?

One passion in twin-hearts, which grows and grew,

Till like two meteors of expanding flame,

Those spheres instinct with it become the same,

Touch, mingle, are transfigured ; ever still

176 EPIPSYCHIDION

Burning, yet ever inconsumable :

In one another's substance rinding food,

Like flames too pure and light and unimbued

To nourish their bright lives with baser prey,

Which point to Heaven and cannot pass away :

One hope within two wills, one will beneath

Two overshadowing minds, one life, one death,

One Heaven, one Hell, one immortality,

And one annihilation. Woe is me !

The winged words on which my soul would pierce

Into the height of love's rare Universe

Are chains of lead around its flight of fire. —

I pant, I sink, I tremble, I expire !

Weak Verses, go, kneel at your Sovereign's feet, And say : — " We are the masters of thy slave ; " What wouldest thou with us and ours and thine ? " Then call your sisters from Oblivion's cave, All singing loud : " Love's very pain is sweet. " But its reward is in the world divine " Which, if not here, it builds beyond the grave." So shall ye live when I am there. Then haste Over the hearts of men, until ye meet Marina, Vanna, Primus, and the rest, And bid them love each other and be bless'd : And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's.

N

ADONA'S

AN ELEGY ON THE DEATH OF JOHN KEATS

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PLATO.

0

ADONAIS

I

I WEEP for Adonais— he is dead ! O, weep for Adonais ! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head ! And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow, say : with me Died Adonais ; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity.

182 ADONAIS

II

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when he lay, When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies In darkness ? where was lorn Urania When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise She sate, while one, with soft enamoured breath, Rekindled all the fading melodies, With which, like flowers that mock the corse beneath, He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of death.

Ill

O, weep for Adonais — he is dead ! Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and weep ! Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burning bed Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart keep, Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; For he is gone, where all things wise and fair Descend ; — oh, dream not that the amorous Deep Will yet restore him to the vital air ; Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs at our despair.

IV

Most musical of mourners, weep again ! Lament anew, Urania ! — He died, Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's pride, The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, Trampled and mocked with many a loathed rite Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, Into the gulph of death ; but his clear Sprite Yet reigns o'er earth ; the third among the sons of light.

ADONAIS 183

v

Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! Not all to that bright station dared to climb ; And happier they their happiness who knew, Whose tapers yet burn through that night of time In which suns perished ; others more sublime, Struck by the envious wrath of man or God, Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent prime ; And some yet live, treading the thorny road, Which leads, through toil and hate, to Fame's serene abode.

VI

But now, thy youngest, dearest one has perished, The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew, Like a pale flower by some sad maiden cherished, And fed with true love tears, instead of dew ; Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the last, The bloom, whose petals, nipped before they blew, Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste ; The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast.

VII

To that high Capital, where kingly Death Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay, He came ; and bought, with price of purest breath, A grave among the eternal. — Come away ! Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill.

1 84 ADONAIS

•

VIII

He will awake no more, oh, never more ! — Within the twilight chamber spreads apace The shadow of white Death, and at the door Invisible Corruption waits to trace His extreme way to her dim dwelling-place ; The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to deface So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal curtain draw.

IX

O, weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams, The passion-winged Ministers of thought, Who were his flocks, whom near the living streams Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he taught The love which was its music, wander not, — Wander no more, from kindling brain to brain, But droop there, whence they sprung ; and mourn

their lot

Round the cold heart, where, after their sweet pain, They ne'er will gather strength, or find a home again.

x

And one with trembling hands clasps his cold head, And fans him with her moonlight wings, and cries ; " Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not dead ; " See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, " Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there lies " A